Deploying Orientalism in Culture and History: From Germany to Central and Eastern Europe 1571135758, 9781571135759

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Cover design: Frank Gutbrod

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Cover image: “L’Empereur d’Allemagne en Voyage” (The Emperor of Germany on His Travels), illustration by Henri Meyer (1844–1899) from the front page of Le Petit Journal, illustrated supplement, November 6, 1898. Courtesy of the Gallica Digital Libraries of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

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Researcher at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.

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James Hodkinson is Associate Professor in German Studies at Warwick University. John Walker is Senior Lecturer in European Cultures and Languages at Birkbeck College, University of London. Shaswati Mazumdar is Professor in German at the University of Delhi. Johannes Feichtinger is a

From Germany to Central and Eastern Europe

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Hodkinson, Kerstin S. Jobst, Jon Keune, Todd Kontje, Margit Köves, Sarah Lemmen, Shaswati Mazumdar, Jyoti Sabharwal, Ulrike Stamm, John Walker.

Deploying Orientalism in Culture and History

Edited by odkinson and alker with azumdar and eichtinger

Contributors: Michael Dusche, Johannes Feichtinger, Johann Heiss, James

Deploying Orientalism Culture and History

“Deploying Orientalism in Culture and History expands and deepens our understanding of European orientalist discourses by not only examining the relatively neglected field of Germanophone orientalism, but also by looking further east to encompass the utterly overlooked orientalisms of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Russia. This collection is required reading for anyone interested in orientalism, travel writing, and the cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe.” —Robert Lemon, University of Oklahoma, author of Imperial Messages: Orientalism as Self-Critique in the Habsburg Fin-de-Siècle

in

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he concept and study of orientalism in Western culture gained a changed understanding from Edward Said’s now iconic 1978 book Orientalism. Especially in Germany, however, recent debate has moved beyond Said’s definition of the phenomenon, highlighting the multiple forms of orientalism within the “West,” the manifold presence of the “East” in the Western world, indeed the epistemological fragility of the ideas of “Occident” and “Orient” as such. This volume focuses on the deployment—here the cultural, philosophical, political, and scholarly uses—of “orientalism” in the German-speaking and Central and Eastern European worlds from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Its interdisciplinary approach combines distinguished contributions by Indian scholars, who approach the topic of orientalism through the prism of German studies as practiced in Asia, with representative chapters by senior German, Austrian, and English-speaking scholars working at the intersection of German and oriental studies.

Edited by J ames

Hodkinson and John Walker with Shaswati Mazumdar and Johannes Feichtinger

Deploying Orientalism in Culture and History

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Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture

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Deploying Orientalism in Culture and History

From Germany to Central and Eastern Europe

Edited by James Hodkinson and John Walker with Shaswati Mazumdar and Johannes Feichtinger

Rochester, New York

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Copyright © 2013 by the Editors and Contributors All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. First published 2013 by Camden House Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA www.camden-house.com and of Boydell & Brewer Limited PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK www.boydellandbrewer.com ISBN-13: 978-1-57113-575-9 ISBN-10: 1-57113-575-8 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Deploying Orientalism in culture and history : from Germany to Central and Eastern Europe / edited by James Hodkinson and John Walker ; with Shaswati Mazumdar and Johannes Feichtinger. p. cm. — (Studies in German literature, linguistics, and culture) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-57113-575-9 (hardcover : alk. paper)— ISBN 1-57113-575-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Orientalism—Germany—History. 2. Orientalism—Europe, Central— History. 3. Orientalism—Europe, Eastern—History. 4. Europe—Civilization— Oriental influences. 5. Travelers’ writings, European—Orient—History and criticism. 6. Orientalism in literature. 7. Orient—In literature. I. Hodkinson, James R., 1973– editor of compilation. II. Walker, John, 1956 January 14– editor of compilation. DS61.85.D47 2013 303.48'24305—dc23 2013030136 This publication is printed on acid-free paper. Printed in the United States of America.

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Contents Preface Introduction James Hodkinson and John Walker

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1: (Re)translating the West: Humboldt, Habermas, and Intercultural Dialogue John Walker

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2: Friedrich Schlegel’s Writings on India: Reimagining Germany as Europe’s True Oriental Self Michael Dusche

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3: Germany’s Local Orientalisms Todd Kontje 4: Tales from the Oriental Borderlands: On the Making and Uses of Colonial Algiers in Germanophone Travel Writing from the Maghreb around 1840 James Hodkinson 5: The Jew, the Turk, and the Indian: Figurations of the Oriental in the German-Speaking World Shaswati Mazumdar 6: M. C. Sprengel’s Writings on India: A Disenchanted and Forgotten Orientalism of the Late Eighteenth Century Jon Keune 7: Occident and Orient in Narratives of Exile: The Case of Willy Haas’s Indian Exile Writings Jyoti Sabharwal 8: Distant Neighbors: Uses of Orientalism in the Late Nineteenth-Century Austro-Hungarian Empire Johann Heiss and Johannes Feichtinger

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9: Modes of Orientalism in Hungarian Letters and Learning of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Margit Köves

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10: Where the Orient Ends? Orientalism and Its Function for Imperial Rule in the Russian Empire Kerstin S. Jobst

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11: Noncolonial Orientalism? Czech Travel Writing on Africa and Asia around 1918 Sarah Lemmen

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12: Oriental Sexuality and Its Uses in Nineteenth-Century Travelogues Ulrike Stamm

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Notes on the Contributors

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Index

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Preface

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HIS VOLUME IS the first publication to be generated by the International Occident-Orient Research Network, which was established in 2008 by Anil Bhatti and James Hodkinson. The network arose out of a collaborative arrangement between Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and Warwick University, UK, and it originally had a solely German Studies focus. The project expanded rapidly to include Delhi University and the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), Vienna, as its other key locations. The group has subsequently attracted scholars from Europe, Asia, and North America, who have also brought a wide range of expertise to the project: these include literary scholars of all persuasions, historians, social scientists, as well, of course, as specialists in the field known problematically as “oriental studies.” The resulting text is an edited volume of chapters that has been developed by members of the network, working in close collaboration. Thus far the project has spanned a period of four years from January 2010 to the date of publication, and has been driven forward by three symposia, held in Delhi, Vienna, and Birmingham, UK. The editors would like to thank a great many institutions and people who have assisted the production of this volume and the research group underlying it since late 2009. These are too numerous to list in their entirety here, though others should not go without mention. Our heartfelt thanks are due especially to: the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies at Delhi University, Delhi University itself, and Jawaharlal Nehru University in India for funding and hosting the first symposium; the OeAW, particularly the Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History, for hosting the second symposium and the Austrian Research Association (Österreichische Forschungsgemeinschaft), City of Vienna (MA 7 Culture and Science) and the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research for generous funding; Professor Sarah Colvin and the Institute of German Studies at Birmingham University, UK, for hosting the third symposium, and the Department of German Studies and the Strategic Partnership Fund at Warwick University, together with the Institute of Humanities at Birkbeck College, London for generously funding this most recent event. For funding the publication of this volume the editors wish to thank the Humanities Research Fund and the Department of German Studies at Warwick University; and the Research Fund of the Faculty of Arts,

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Birkbeck College, London. The editors would like to extend a special personal thanks to Professor Emeritus Anil Bhatti for his pivotal role in establishing the network and to Dr. Brian Haman (Warwick University) for his assistance in organizing the third symposium and in the preparation of the manuscript. Finally, we should like to thank the Gallica Digital Libraries at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris, for the reproduction of the cover image and for granting us the rights to use it: thanks are also due to Laurie Duboucheix-Saunders for overseeing the whole process.

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Introduction James Hodkinson and John Walker

I. Received Orientalisms and New Departures

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the term “orientalism” has become a commonplace and often pejorative term within cultural studies. In Edward Said’s seminal Orientalism (1978)1 the term was first defined critically as a mode of thought and writing by which Western discourses exercise a form of ideological power over the peoples and cultures of the East, reducing them to Europe’s consummate other: exotic, degenerate, passive, fanatical, mysterious, civilized, and uncivilized by degree. The term has, though, come to be used so liberally that it seems to imply the existence of a real, unified historical school of thought, an ideological movement of like-minded people or at least a recognized set of writings, attitudes, and beliefs that carried that name within the Europe of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This was not the case. Naturally, the terms “Orient” and “orientalism” permeate this volume. Here, though, they are treated within a context of critical awareness, as a contemporary tool for critically tracing patterns and tendencies within historical European discourses. The scope of what can be termed “orientalism,” of where and in what forms we might seek it, of the range of differing functions it fulfills in differing contexts, and of where, quite simply, the so-called Orient was thought to be in a geographical sense, must be considered as open to a process of redefinition. This volume is intended as part of this process. Its aims are twofold. First, it seeks to broaden the perspectives of the Anglo-American debate on orientalism within an English-language study. During the last two decades significant progress has already been made in advancing that debate beyond Said’s original emphasis on British and French forms of the phenomenon. Substantial contributions, not least within international German studies, have widened the range of material covered and shed light on orientalist traditions in a different national-cultural context. This book builds on such progress. However, it is a key innovation of this collection to draw into the debate other, relatively neglected forms of European orientalism from the disciplines of Central and East European studies, juxtaposing these with Western European traditions for the first VER THE LAST THREE DECADES

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time in a comparative mode within a single volume. This approach raises a host of issues concerning whether or not the imagined borders of the Orient change as we move to consider eastern European forms of orientalism, and also how national cultures that have been considered to border directly onto or even in some senses “contain” the Orient (one thinks of Austria-Hungary and Russia) configure their geographical relationship to it. The volume’s second aim is connected to the first: an attempt to extend our understanding of how the geographical locus of the Orient varied across a range of European cultures also illuminates the differing uses and functions of constructions of the Orient within those shifting settings. It is in this sense that the volume’s key term of “deployment” arises: this, though, does not necessarily refer to forms of orientalism operating within a solely colonial or military context, or indeed to an exclusively predatory or reductive use of the Orient in the material considered, but rather to its uses and functions in the widest possible sense: political, cultural, theoretical, aesthetic, theological, or otherwise. While seeking to discern differences in how imagery, knowledge, ideas, and tropes of the Orient vary with changing European perspectives, the collection as a whole will not overstate such discontinuities and thus crudely reinscribe a sense of national cultures working in mutual isolation: the chapters also illuminate continuities in orientalist values, themes, attitudes, and strategies across European boundaries.

II. Orientalisms in Evolution German studies and the German tradition of reflection about the oriental world was a self-confessed blind spot for Said, and therefore a point at which future scholars were bound to engage critically with his work. Inquiries into Germanic forms of orientalism have both widened the canon of what constituted European orientalist writing and refined the conceptual apparatus that scholars bring to bear on it. There is already a considerable body of scholarship that has made headway in this context. In her study Colonial Fantasies (1997) Susanna Zantop wrote on the slightly wider though intimately connected theme of German colonialism—or, rather, on the colonial paradigms or fantasies that were to be found in historical, anthropological, literary, and popular texts between 1770 and 1870. The diverse yet imaginary encounters between Germans and imaginary “natives” in late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century literature were prefigurations for “real” colonial encounters in Africa, South America, and the Pacific after 1871: by that time Germany’s collective cultural imagination already contained a glorified sense of national identity, defined against both European and non-European others.2 Russell Berman’s Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture sought a more complex understanding of German culture’s

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complicity in the colonial age, specifically by rehabilitating aspects of German Enlightenment thought and culture and exploring their anticolonial tendencies: his opening and quite striking juxtaposition of Captain James Cook’s account of his voyages with that of his German shipmate Georg Forster perhaps best exemplifies this.3 Germany’s position not only as the so-called belated nation, but also as the belated empire of Europe neither automatically exculpates nor implicates its traditions in the legacy of colonial thinking—and thereby of orientalism. Nina Berman’s Orientalismus, Kolonialismus und Moderne: Zum Bild des Orients in der deutschsprachigen Kultur um 1900 (1996) examined texts from Germany’s imperialist period. While Hugo von Hofmannsthal sees the Orient as an exotic and retrogressive space that offers an alternative to a disenchanted European modernity, Karl May’s oriental novels offer the literary German protagonist an opportunity to pose as a worldly traveler, better integrated in the Orient than his British imperialist counterparts but, through his mastery of Eastern languages and mores, exerting a quasi-colonial form of control over the Orient; Else Laske-Schüler’s exile writing from Palestine seeks to fashion an alternative Jewish identity derived from an essentialized vision of a fantastical Orient that remains undiminished despite her residence within it.4 Nina Berman’s more recent German Literature on the Middle East (2011) extends the discussion over a longer period, from the time of the Crusades to the end of the Cold War, examining the diverse and changing relationships between the German-speaking world and Middle Eastern states and empires.5 This interdisciplinary study illuminates these complex relationships not only within literature and writing more generally, but also within economic, social, and political processes and patterns of material exchange. Focusing on German-language literary and nonfiction writings about the Middle East (including historical documents, religious literature, travel writing, essays, and scholarship), Berman suggests that the German encounter with the Middle East is at once distinct from and yet characterized by patterns shared with other European countries. Todd Kontje’s German Orientalisms (2004) offered a “more nuanced version” of orientalism “as seen through the lens of German literature of the last thousand years.”6 It examined Wolfram’s Parzival, Grimmelshausen’s Simplicissimus, Herder, Novalis, Goethe, and later Thomas Mann’s Zauberberg; it also looked at themes in German writing on the Orient across epochs, taking in Eichendorff, Gustav Freytag, and Günter Grass, as well as migrant writers working within contemporary Germany such as Emine Sevgi Özdamar. Acknowledging Said’s obvious point that given its diffuse political structure prior to 1871 Germany had no colonial interest in the geographical Orient, Kontje argues that this led to an idiomatic form of German orientalism, whereby writers oscillated between identifying “Germany” with the rest of Europe and, conversely, allying

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Germany with the Orient (2–3). Kontje’s readings of these tendencies in the Enlightenment and post-Enlightenment periods reveals a “compensatory Eurocentricism” (demarcating a European Germany from the East), yet also emergent traditions of “anti-semitic Indo-Germanicism” (ibid). Consequently a plurality of specifically German “orientalisms,” free of geographical specificity, is revealed, in which each serves a differing function at different points throughout the history of German nation building. Susan Marchand’s study German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race and Scholarship (2009) picks up on similarly problematic ideological tensions in the first study of academic oriental studies as practiced within the German speaking lands throughout the long nineteenth century. Against the shifting backdrop of German national and political history, the study of oriental language, culture, and history was caught up in an ongoing field of tension between enlightened objectivity and politicizing and racializing tendencies.7 Scholars have also drawn our attention to the fact that European cultural discourse about the Orient was present long before the emergence of modern academic disciplines from the later Enlightenment onwards. Berman’s and Kontje’s studies are in themselves evidence of this, though a range of other contributions also discern traditions of using what might be termed “oriental tropes” in medieval German literature.8 Sarah Colvin’s study The Rhetorical Feminine: Gender and Orient on the German Stage, 1647–1742 (1999) filled further gaps by examining the use of orientalist tropes on the German stage during this period, with a particular focus on how gendered orientalist tropes and figures represented threats to patriarchal Christian Europe.9 However, the focus of this volume will be the deployment of orientalism in the European traditions of the so-called modern and postmodern periods: that is, from the second half of the eighteenth century to the present day. This choice of historical context is not born of a failure to recognize the extent to which the thought and writing of the premodern period bequeathed a swathe of tropes, figures, and stereotypes to later eras, nor is it motivated by any disparagement of the very significant scholarship on the earlier period in which several contributors to this volume have participated. This editorial decision derives from the historical fact that the second half of the eighteenth century witnessed, in German-speaking Europe and arguably beyond, a reflection on nationhood, cultural identity, and difference, often closely entwined with the growth in empirical scholarship about the “oriental” world, which took a recognizably modern form and continues directly to inform contemporary debates.

III. Reconsidering Difference The concern of this volume to extend critical reflection on orientalism both geographically, in order to include the many different orientalisms of

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Central and Eastern Europe that feature only marginally in Said’s seminal text and the responses it provoked, and historically, culturally, and politically, in order to address the very different ideological considerations that shaped those iterations of orientalism, is also paralleled by a widening of theoretical concerns. The idea of orientalism and its critique has played a major role in one of the most influential discourses in contemporary intellectual life: the debate about the ideas of “subjectivity,” “difference,” and “otherness,” which has preoccupied much of recent philosophy and cultural studies. This discourse has been especially influential in the linguistic and psychoanalytic philosophy of postmodernism in the French-speaking world and its Anglo-American reception. However, these intellectual traditions are not the same as those of Central and Eastern Europe. This volume will therefore also aim to explore the relevance of the different kinds of orientalism practiced in Central and Eastern Europe to some central concerns in philosophy and cultural theory, especially the ways in which we conceive the very idea of cultural difference. The contributions to this volume are informed by an idea of linguistically and culturally diverse, yet simultaneously shared, histories,10 which calls into question the need or indeed the possibility of individuals, groups, or nations identifying absolutely with either side of the dualism of Orient and Occident. That idea, the volume suggests, becomes more visible within the thought of Germanophone Europe than it does within the traditional Anglo-American or Francophone conceptions of the Orient. There is often a self-reflexive quality to the Germanophone tradition, which shows an explicit awareness that the construction of any non-European other is also inextricably bound up with the problem of defining “Europe” itself. The alternative orientalist thinking of German-speaking Europe also demonstrates that an understanding of how difference is constructed need not make real intercultural communication impossible. According to this way of thinking, difference, by being acknowledged, might in fact be transcended. One of the most important recent initiatives in reconstructing the history of such reflection is Andrea Polaschegg’s Der andere Orientalismus (2005). As well offering the fullest discussion to date of German forms of orientalist culture, placing these in their intellectual-, literary- and political-historical contexts, Polaschegg makes a key theoretical contribution by questioning whether the pervasive postmodern concern with cultural difference and otherness might in fact entrench the very colonial ideology it seeks to overcome.11 What is the real “difference,” and who is the real other, with which genuine intercultural dialogue ought to be concerned? Could our ideas of difference and otherness be cultural constructs themselves, just as much as the universalist ideology that they oppose? And could those ideas, so current in contemporary philosophical discourse and so influential in oriental studies in the wake of the Saidian critique, be equally capable of imprisoning intercultural

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dialogue within a framework of Western cultural assumptions? While these philosophical-methodological questions are explored at the theoretical level throughout this volume—and particularly in those chapters with a focus on German culture—the collection also shifts to consider how the treatment of the Orient in the literary and cultural practices and traditions of Central and Eastern Europe further undermines the starkly segregated model of Europe vis-à-vis its others.

IV. The “Imaginary Geography” of Orientalism and the Shift Eastward The expanding awareness of European paradigms of the Orient also exposes the geographical fluidity of the concept. Can we ever really draw a single and fixed map of the historical and geographical Orient as it appeared to varying forms of nineteenth-century European consciousness? In fact, to attempt to create a single, fixed map of the terrains that were included in the nineteenth-century term “Orient,” be that pictorially or semantically, is to fall into the trap of orientalism, even if we seek to re-create that map from the critical distance of an ostensibly postcolonial age. For different models of the Orient, constructed from the perspectives of different national and cultural perspectives, reflected the specific needs and outlook of each. There were many Orients, each of which were not only relative to their cultural origins, but also fluid and subject to change. Said had already begun to make this point in Orientalism, describing the changing ideological coloring of Orients within Western discourses.12 It has become almost required practice to begin studies of orientalism with some form of critique of his work—and in some ways this volume is no exception. Yet another of his concepts remains of ongoing relevance and is of key importance here: the “imaginary geography” that Said sees at work in orientalist or indeed colonial writing generally will figure in many of the chapters that follow. Reflecting generally on how space and distance are endowed with meaning within language, Said wrote in Orientalism: “space acquires emotional and even rational sense by a kind of poetic process, whereby the vacant or anonymous reaches of distance are converted into meaning for us here” (55). The imagining or reimagining of space within representational systems, then, is crucial to understanding how regions, landscapes, and cities were shifted in and out of the European construction of the Orient. The idea was later further developed by Said in Culture and Imperialism (1993): Just as none of us is outside or beyond geography, none of us is completely free from the struggle over geography. That struggle is complex and interesting because it is not only about soldiers and cannons but also about ideas, about forms, about images and imaginings.13

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Said proposes that physical space is never finally fixed, be it as part of an Orient or otherwise, but that all geographies necessarily construct the imaginary identities of places. The naming of regions, of topography, the marking of territory and its affiliation or subjugation to forms of human power, are characteristics of all history and are as true of the so-called precolonial and postcolonial periods as they are of the age of empire. The colonial period, it would seem, simply provides particularly violent and visceral physical instances of this transepochal struggle. We need only consider briefly the history of maps of any one selected region within the so-called Orient to find evidence of the imaginary quality of geography at work. North Africa, for instance, is a rich example: often thought of as the near shores of the Orient from the European perspective, the region was once divided into the beyriks and deyliks of Ottoman territory, the so-called Barbary states that made up the empire’s western limits.14 Subsequently the region reverted to being the western part of the resurgent Arabic world—an identity encapsulated by the Arabic term “Maghreb,” meaning “West” or “place of the sunset,” which has in turn become a common term in postcolonial discourse. Even the ostensibly neutral phrase “North Africa” can be traced back, etymologically and culturally, to the Roman colonization of the region. Such shifts in nomenclature mark the way in which culturally determined ideologies have sought to appropriate the region as part of a sequence of mutually “superseding” geographies. But the Maghreb always was part of the (now conventional) Saidian Orient—the boundaries of the Orient dealt with in the following chapters are much more varied, they are constantly reimagined and remain in constant flux—as do their uses and functions.

V. The Scope of the Volume Scholarship on Germanic orientalism has been so transformative of the wider debate that there remains a strong Germanic focus to this collection. Several contributors to this volume reconnect the modern discipline of oriental studies to one of its most important roots in the German Enlightenment and the philosophy of German idealism. In the world of Herder, Humboldt, Kant, and Hegel, the intellectual encounter between the German-speaking and oriental worlds was constantly accompanied, in a way conspicuously lacking in Anglophone and Francophone Europe, by a sustained reflection about German cultural identity, as well as a philosophical interrogation of the ideas of “culture” and “identity” themselves. Several of our contributors trace the trajectories of such theoretical reflection. John Walker traces the continuing relevance of Wilhelm von Humboldt’s idea of the comparative study of language as a model for intercultural dialogue in Jürgen Habermas’s most recent work on the

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demand for recognition by ethnic and religious minorities in a liberal and secular public domain. He argues that Habermas’s most recent reception of Humboldt suggests a model of intercultural communication very different from the apparently definitive ideal of a “discourse without domination” (herrschaftsfreier Diskurs) that informed his earlier work. Habermas’s later work, Walker suggests, reflects a kind of Kantian regulative ideal of intercultural dialogue, closely modeled on Humboldt’s idea of linguistic translation, in which cultural presuppositions, including those of religious or theological origin, have more to be acknowledged and empathetically understood than abstractly overcome. Michael Dusche highlights a less self-critical tendency in German thought, showing how Friedrich Schlegel’s “discovery” and interpretation of the ancient Indian texts reflects debates within German romanticism about German cultural identity in Europe. For Dusche, Schlegel’s “discovery” of the East is as much a discovery and construction of a German European identity in response to the political and cultural challenge of postrevolutionary France as it is a theory or interpretation of Asian language or culture. In India, Dusche shows, Germany finds a reflection of its own self-understanding as the oriental other of Europe: an idea with fateful political and cultural consequences from German romanticism to Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, and beyond. Todd Kontje refines the concepts of the discussion, arguing that the multiple German representations of the Orient from the nineteenth century onward have their roots in “local orientalisms” internal to different variants of German culture. The investigation is transepochal, working back from the films of Fatih Akin through the work of Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann to Johann Wolfgang Goethe. Thus the chapter explores multiple and conflicting imaginings of the German nation, which was itself always more a cultural than a geographical entity, by writers informed as much by regional and European identities as they were by the idea of a unitary German state. The function of the Orient, though always serving some purpose and often reduced in one form or another, reflects Germany’s internal complexities across localities and history, such that “the site from which orientalism is deployed becomes as mobile and multilayered as the places onto which it is projected.”15 The chapters in this volume further enrich our knowledge of the diverse and sometimes lesser-known forms of German orientalism. Shaswati Mazumdar’s chapter focuses on how three received oriental figures, the Jew, the Turk, and the Indian, were represented in three separate historical events, the Damascus affair (1840), the Crimean War (1853–56), and the Indian Revolt (1857) in Germanophone journalistic discourse: all three events drew an extraordinary amount of attention in the European press in general and in the German print media in particular. In fact they happened at a time when “print capitalism,” as Benedict

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Anderson calls it, had begun to provide the basis for imagining the nation and conflicting imperial interests abroad reflected increasing competition between the European powers.16 If travel writing has long been seen as a genre that exemplifies classic models of orientalism, then James Hodkinson’s chapter further refines that view, examining two contrasting and hitherto uncommentated examples published by German-speaking travelers to French colonial Algeria around 1840—one a missionary (Timotheus Dürr) and the other (Friedrich Fürst zu Schwarzenberg) an Austrian conscript in French military service. As writers, both are connected to and yet distinct from the French colonizers, making possible a critical perspective on colonialism; however, both writers, still indebted to the French colonial enterprise as they wrote, had limited scope or need to express this. Ultimately, both writers have classically orientalist aims, although each employs different tactics: while Schwarzenberg’s text tells of the sacking of Algiers and, subsequently, conceives of implicitly policed lines of ethnic distinction between colonists and colonized under French rule, Dürr’s report on his missionary work almost denies the existence of any sense of the Orient other than as a geographical and cultural vacuum to be filled with European infrastructure and Christianity. Two other chapters—those by Jon Keune and Jyoti Sabharwal—complete the Germanophone focus. Both look at German speakers who were interested in India, though in different periods and from differing perspectives, and both detect in their chosen writers an approach that adopts an anticolonial posture that, in contrast to the texts in Hodkinson’s piece, questions or destabilizes orientalist stereotyping. Keune writes on Matthias Christian Sprengel, a deskbound German professor of history and politics who marshaled information from diverse European sources at the turn of the eighteenth century to write histories of two Indian powers. Die Geschichte der Maratten (1786) and Hyder Aly und Tippo Saheb (1801) represent a different vision of the Orient that was concerned with current affairs and political developments in relation to colonial rule around the world. This focus on the political structures, the economic and military history of important Indian kingdoms, together with his lack of interest in those areas most open to contamination by orientalist modes—discourses on culture, religion, and language—possibly goes some way to explaining why Sprengel managed to avoid the more essentialist tendencies of contemporaries such as Johann Gottfried Herder. Sabharwal leaps forward to the twentieth century to treat the works of one exemplary German-speaking exile who came to India to escape persecution from the Nazi regime in Europe, namely, the screenwriter, critic, and publisher Willy Haas, who scripted some of the most successful films of the 1940s for the Bhavnani Studios in Bombay, and also published a series of essays on Indian culture and mythology that were published in India and in Germany. Locating these writings within

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the German discourse on India, this chapter shows how the comparative framework in Haas’s writings, the influences of German Indology and the specific location of exile in the Orient circumscribe and undermine the hegemonic position of the Occident vis-à-vis the Orient. The interacting issues of empire, race, religion, and fascism on the one hand, and the writer’s contrasting affinities with India as a country struggling for independence on the other, form the background for Haas’s engagement with the institutionalized orientalism of British rule in India. The chapters within this volume pan eastward, however, moving to consider the orientalist traditions of Central and Eastern European nations including a discussion of the phenomenon in the culture of the Russian Empire—a country that would by most European standards be seen to encompass large parts of the Orient within its borders. The first point of departure is the Germanophone, though culturally distinct, Austro-Hungarian perspective. Robert Lemon has already begun to reflect on how Austrian orientalist discourses employed oriental motifs not to enforce Western hegemony, but rather to practice self-reflection and self-critique.17 Continuing the discussion, Johann Heiss and Johannes Feichtinger’s chapter considers how Austro-Hungarian foreign and domestic policy in the late nineteenth century combined the idea of an inherited Christian and Catholic mission to the Turkish and Islamic world with the realities of power politics in the Balkans. This chapter focuses specifically on how Bosnia-Herzegovina was integrated into the empire. Austria-Hungary’s “civilizing” mission in the Balkans was designed to strengthen the imperial hold over the region, on the one hand strengthening its political and cultural borders with, and cultural distinctiveness from, the southern Slavic states and the Ottoman East, while simultaneously granting political rights and freedoms to “oriental” Bosnian Muslims who formed new communities within Austria-Hungary and thus encouraging them to be part of the empire. Sarah Lemmen offers an analysis of Czech travelogues about Africa and Asia from around 1918: while her chosen texts appeal to the model of a civilized and civilizing Occident vis-à-vis an untamed Orient, Lemmen maintains a sense of how the writers also resisted these tendencies. The result is the sense of a modern traveling Czech subject who envisions a role for the recently liberated Czech nation on a global stage and presents it not least as a foil to the colonial outlooks of other European nations. Margit Köves covers the last two hundred years of intellectual history, within which Hungarian culture sought to fulfill the complex tasks of nation building and of forming national literary and political identities. Throughout, the Orient plays a central but evolving role, as it is used as a narrative of origin, as an alternative to a Germanicized Austrian identity and a modern capitalist Hungary, and later as the object of a sophisticated, self-reflexive socialist traveling

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subject. The Orient functions to express a complex sense of Hungarian identity as an occidental-oriental hybrid, though not in a manner that is uniformly and crassly reductive of the East. Finally, Kerstin Jobst considers how the idea of the Orient in nineteenth-century Russia developed when Russia itself, under the pressure of the Pan-Slavist movement, constructed a cultural and religious identity distinct from Western Europe but also promulgated its own “civilizing” mission in the Russian East. Russian orientalism is thus unique among its “European” counterparts because it is predicated on the idea of its own internal “East,” which it is called on to make a more uniform part of itself, and yet also the idea of Russia itself as a culturally privileged “East” that must resist incorporation into the culture of Western Europe. It is, though, precisely this geographical shift eastward that complicates any notion of the Orient predicated solely on attempts to control territory, politically or conceptually. The discussions of the Central and Eastern European perspectives do not simply show a geographical Orient that was uniformly displaced further to the east as the European subject itself moves in the same direction. Just as Kontje’s chapter complicates the sense of a unified national orientalism in Germany by exposing how local inflections codetermine the use of concepts, images, and tropes of the Orient, so other contributors show how the apparently “closer” geographical relationship between Central and Eastern European nations and the Orient produced more complex East-West encounters and relationships of a different, namely, human dimension. The so-called heterogeneous and pluricultural societies of this region, Habsburg Austria-Hungary being the obvious example discussed in these chapters, exemplify this notion of how certain forms of the Orient were thought of as indivisible from or even intrinsic to so-called occidental national cultures. Insofar as it is thought of in terms of human groupings or communities, the nineteenth-century conception of Orient can be something internal to and inextricably fused with Europe. Versions of the Orient were also configured in terms of a different notion of “space,” however. The spaces implied here are conceptual rather than geophysical, and delineate the boundaries between communities and forms of collective human identity.18 Thus we can conceive of the Orient, perhaps more obviously for this context, as an ethnic and religious space, though also as a socioeconomic or a gendered space. Such insights inform the chapter by Ulrike Stamm, for instance, who shows how nineteenthcentury European travelers’ accounts of the Islamic world presented a highly loaded image of oriental women and female sexuality. Yet in seeking within travelogues more than a uniform exoticization of the oriental feminine, Stamm’s analysis maps out a complex range of attributed functions. The sexualized oriental woman serves as a point at which the male traveler can seek to master the Orient allegorically through sexual

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conquest, while the female traveler, working within the literally feminine space of the harem, can depreciate oriental femininity in a manner that (re)asserts her own socially predicated norms of sexuality. Significantly, Stamm’s approach allows us to trace new patterns of deployment: while the gender, social status, and nationality of the writers considered often point to a range of types of oriental encounter across which oriental femininity plays varying roles, the discussion finds a common tendency to functionalize oriental femininity in a way that ensures the primacy of nineteenth-century European identity, roles, and values. By examining works by Flaubert and de Maupassant, as well as Germanophone writers such as Hermann von Pückler-Muskau, Ida Hahn-Hahn, and Ida Pfeiffer, Stamm reconnects the discussion with the classic orientalisms of Western Europe (France, Germany, and Austria). Her transnational discussion shows that, when thought of as a gendered space, the Orient can also complicate or undermine a model of orientalist traditions organized discretely along European national-cultural boundaries. Thus these chapters seek a pluralistic approach to modern forms of European orientalism in several senses. They continue to deconstruct the notion that the Orient was ever reducible to one fixed physical region by exploring its “imaginary geography,” showing that constructions of the Orient were always spatially fluid. Building on this model of the “ever shifting Orient,” the chapters also conceive of a heterogeneous European subject and begin to chart the diverse functions and uses of these Orients across national cultures, exploring how writers from differing contexts and times inherited and adapted tropes and strategies to fit their divergent ideological, political, and cultural needs across the period considered. The discussions also attempt to show a more complex set of intercultural dynamics to be at work within ostensibly orientalist traditions than simple binaries of self and other, such that not all writers prove crassly reductive in their uses of the Orient, but at times seek to conceive and represent a more heterogeneous and less ideologically loaded version of the Orient to destabilize the binary East–West model. In working toward this kind of productive complexity, however, the volume as a whole sounds a cautionary note: to distinguish neatly between forms of the Orient or orientalism in terms of discrete European national cultures runs the risk of homogenizing and stereotyping those European perspectives. We must not lose sight of how the critical examination of Orients highlights the internal complexity of European societies. We are reminded, furthermore, of other constructions of Orient, such as those predicated on social and gendered identities, which allow us to discern tendencies that cut across national boundaries, with different forms of European writing on the Orient actually showing certain practices in common. To find such continuities in the midst of such divergent complexity is in some ways to return to Said’s core idea, and to the title of this volume: textual

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renditions of the Orient are always deployed to fulfill some function or other and, however benign these might seem to be, we must seek to maintain a critical awareness of this. This book may also help to illuminate some urgent contemporary cultural and political debates. The resurgence of political Islam, both in the global “South” and “East” and in the American and European worlds, has decisively recast academic and political discussion about Eurocentrism and the contested universalism of the idea of human rights. For some secular European thinkers like Tzvetan Todorov in France, Frank Furedi in the United Kingdom, and Heiner Geissler in Germany,19 the inheritance of the European Enlightenment is under attack and in need of defense against its fundamentalist opponents in the Middle East and the Anglo-American world. By contrast, Islamic scholars like Tariq Ramadan20 have repeatedly warned against the instrumental deployment of a false idea of human rights, itself negated by Western political practice, in response to the perceived threat of radical Islam. For some, current events make a restatement of Enlightenment values against the political and cultural critique of the last two decades urgently necessary. For others, the current geopolitical deployment of those values makes their capacity to serve the interests of Western political and cultural domination all the more evident. These issues, now of such contemporary relevance, are reflected in German, Austrian, and other Central and East European discourses at least two centuries old. Those discourses are by no means identical with what has come to be known as orientalism in the Anglo-American world, and yet are highly relevant to the debate about the uses of orientalism in a truly global culture. In this way the multidisciplinary and diverse chapters of this volume will seek to make a lively contribution to that continuing debate.

Notes 1

Edward Said, Orientalism, 3rd ed. (London: Penguin, 2003).

2

Suzanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). See also the German translation Koloniale Phantasien im vorkolonialen Deutschland (1770–1870) (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1999). 3

Russell Berman, Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998). 4

Nina Berman, Orientalismus, Kolonialismus und Moderne: Zum Bild des Orients in der deutschsprachigen Kultur um 1900 (Stuttgart: Verlag für Wissenschaft und Forschung, 1996). 5

Nina Berman, German Literature on the Middle East: Discourses and Practices, 1000–1989 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011). 6

Todd Kontje, German Orientalisms (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004). Quotations are from sleeve notes.

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7

Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 8

See, generally, Nina Berman, German Literature on the Middle East; Kontje, German Orientalisms; and also James Hodkinson and Jeff Morrison, Encounters with Islam in German Literature and Culture (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2009), esp. chaps.1–3.

9

Sarah Colvin, The Rhetorical Feminine: Gender and Orient on the German Stage, 1647–1742 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), especially “The Rhetorical Feminine: Women and Muslims in the Literary Imagination,” 14–69. 10

A useful exploration of the concept of such “shared histories” can be found in Sebastian Conrad and Shalini Randeria, eds., Jenseits des Eurozentrismus: Postkoloniale Perspektiven in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften (Frankfurt: Campus, 2002), esp. 9–49. 11

Andrea Polaschegg, Der andere Orientalismus: Regeln deutsch-morgenlandischer Imagination im neunzehnten Jahrhundert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005). A full discussion of Polaschegg’s application of more sophisticated alterity theory to issues of German orientalism can be found in John Walker’s contribution to this volume (chapter 1). 12

Said, Orientalism, 22–23.

13

Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred Knopf Inc, 1993), 7.

14

See James Hodkinson’s chapter in this volume.

15

See Todd Kontje’s chapter in this volume.

16

See Shaswati Mazumdar’s chapter in this volume.

17

Robert Lemon, Imperial Messages: Orientalism as Self-Critique in the Habsburg Fin de Siècle (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011). 18 Mike Crang and Nigel Thrift, Thinking Space (London: Routledge, 2000), esp. 1–30 and 302–48. 19

See: Tzvetan Todorov, In Defence of the Enlightenment (London: Atlantic, 2009); Frank Furedi, On Tolerance: A Defence of Moral Independence (London: Continuum, 2011); Heiner Geissler, Sapere Aude: Warum wir eine neue Aufklärung brauchen (Berlin: Ullstein, 2012). 20 Tariq Ramadan, The Quest for Meaning: Developing a Philosophy of Pluralism (London: Allen Lane, 2012).

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1: (Re)translating the West: Humboldt, Habermas, and Intercultural Dialogue John Walker

T

HERE ARE NO TWO WORDS in contemporary discourse more current, or more elastic and therefore potentially more misunderstood, than “difference” and “otherness.” Both terms are constantly present in discussions of intercultural communication and therefore of the practice of orientalism, which is our theme. This chapter will interrogate this discourse in light of contemporary debates about communication between cultures and the linguistic thought of the German Enlightenment, especially the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt, and the reprise of some key Humboldtian themes in the most recent work of Jürgen Habermas on intercultural dialogue.

I. Von Humboldt and a New Paradigm for Orientalism In her seminal book Der andere Orientalismus (2005), Andrea Polaschegg shows that our constant concern to deconstruct false ideas of the other can make sameness and difference the controlling and even exclusive categories of intercultural study, so preventing us from understanding what might be really other no less than what is really part of ourselves.1 In other words, a concern to overcome one kind of use of orientalism—the Eurocentric construction of an artificial oriental other—can sometimes license a different kind of instrumentalism in oriental studies. Our concern to deconstruct a false other might prevent us from communicating with real others: those actual other people with whom we must speak if any true intercultural dialogue is to begin. The suspicion that the kind of intercultural studies conducted in the West might imply the false construction of a supposedly real cultural other as their object—a suspicion inherent in oriental studies at least since Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978)—can therefore become a self-fulfilling prophecy. For, as Polaschegg convincingly argues, what really grounds intercultural study, and even more so intercultural dialogue, is not the dialectic between what is our own and what is other than ourselves—das

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Eigene and das Andere—but rather the dialogue between what we experience as familiar (das Vertraute) and what is initially foreign to us (das Fremde). In that dialogue, our understanding of each of the two poles will be changed. What we believe we know from the inside will necessarily become strange as we make it into an object of study, and what was strange to us will become part of what is familiar to us.2 The paradigm shift that Andrea Polaschegg has proposed is anything but an abstract matter of terminology. For, as she points out, the critical cultural turn in Anglo-American oriental studies often associated with Edward Said has its own shadow side in the idea that a supposedly absolute opposition and difference of culture—what Samuel Huntington in 1993 called The Clash of Civilizations—is the key to understanding contemporary political history.3 This position, in the last two decades, has all too often been taken to support not the practice of intercultural dialogue but rather the failure to begin it. This chapter will take up some of these contemporary debates in relation to the linguistic thought of the German Enlightenment, especially the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt, and what I will suggest is its echo in the most recent work of Jürgen Habermas on the question of multiculturalism and the problem of intercultural communication. The work of von Humboldt offers a conceptual framework for the discussion of cultural and linguistic difference that has some decisive advantages over the most influential paradigm by which that discussion has recently been defined: the linguistic deconstructionism that has dominated much of recent French thought. For much of that paradigm, the key concept is not difference but différance: the supposedly inevitable elision of otherness, and hence the infinite deferral of true communication, which all linguistic communication is supposed to entail.4 For Derrida, the acknowledgement of that elision and deferral is also the recognition of the real difference between persons (and, implicitly, cultures) that language can make manifest but neither can nor should overcome. By contrast, for von Humboldt the work of linguistic and cultural interpretation is about “translation” in both the literal and extended senses of the term. The purpose of translation is as much to extend our own linguistic capacity as it is to assimilate the thought of another. Translation means allowing what we trust (das Vertraute) to become strange and unfamiliar to us as well as making our own what is initially foreign (fremd). The two processes are inseparable and necessarily unpredictable in their results, which can never be brought to a fixed and definitive articulation in a single linguistic and conceptual scheme. For von Humboldt, there can be no ideal metalanguage through which all cultures might potentially be interpreted. Linguistic understanding—whether of our own language or of others— takes place only in and through the act of translation itself. While fully aware of the link between language and culture, Humboldt insists that

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the encounter between languages (of which “translation” can only be the contingently imperfect result) is the key to cultural understanding, not the other way around.5 It cannot make sense to speak of an other until we have encountered a real other in dialogue. The study of language must be both singular and comparative, synchronic and diachronic, at once: an activity that develops the communicative and therefore the intellectual capacity of individuals, cultures, and humanity itself.6 To be sure, von Humboldt’s conception of the general cultural relevance of linguistic study is also linked to the discovery of the Orient and Orientalistik in the Germany of his time. Von Humboldt, like other German orientalists of the early nineteenth century, insisted that the study of other cultures required the study of the most ancient and pure forms of those cultures’ languages. The interest of knowledge behind that study had as much to do with the self-definition of Germany in early nineteenth-century Europe as it did with any dispassionate study of the East. However, while von Humboldt certainly shared part of that cultural and political interest,7 he differs from many of his contemporaries— especially Friedrich von Schlegel, the leading German orientalist of his time—because his primary intellectual focus was not Orientalistik in the modern or nineteenth-century sense of the term, but the comparative study of language as a paradigm for a program of universal education.8 Von Humboldt’s concern with the study of oriental languages (and indeed the languages of the world) has an epistemological and ethical relevance that cannot be reduced to the cultural or political interests that may in part have motivated German orientalism. Indeed, I will argue that von Humboldt’s conception of the comparative study of language offers an alternative to the Saidian paradigm of orientalism that is more fruitful than the apparent reversal of that paradigm in some more recent forms of oriental studies. In the last part of the paper I will suggest that the most recent work of Jürgen Habermas develops an idea of “translation” as the key to intercultural understanding that owes much to von Humboldt’s own. The idea of “translation” developed in Habermas’s most recent work also provides a much more fruitful concept of intercultural dialogue than his earlier work could offer. I will conclude by suggesting some ways in which Habermas’s idea of translation between cultures is relevant to contemporary debates about dialogue between religious traditions. The linguistic thought of von Humboldt is unthinkable without that of Herder. Herder’s key concept is language as the self-expression of humanity in its environment. Language is the vehicle of both the particularity and the universality of the human. For Herder, language is the source of culture rather than the reverse; it is both cultural and intercultural. Language develops through human interaction in two senses. First, it becomes a more powerful instrument of communication as humanity becomes more conscious of itself and its environment.9 Second, this

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process of development (Fortbildung) also involves interaction with other and different linguistic communities. Particular languages develop as the capacity for universal human communication grows.10 In the work of von Humboldt the focus on language is both more formally developed and more focused on the comparative study of language, especially the activity of translation, which he sees as the key to intercultural communication. Von Humboldt completely changes the terms of the debate about the origin of language that dominated the linguistic thought of the European Enlightenment. In his essay Über das vergleichende Sprachstudium in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprachentwicklung (1821, On the Comparative Study of Languages in Relation to the Several Epochs of Language Development) he argues that the question of the origin of language can only be formulated in terms of an epistemological circle: So natürlich die Annahme allmähliger Ausbildung der Sprachen ist, so könnte die Erfindung nur mit einem Schlage geschehen. Der Mensch ist nur Mensch durch Sprache; um aber die Sprache zu erfinden, musste er schon Mensch sein.11

The ideas of humanity and language are coextensive and originally linked in an act by which humanity creatively engenders language and reflection. Hence the specific question of the origin of language reveals itself to be either insoluble or unintelligible. However, von Humboldt makes the epistemological circle virtuous by changing a question about the origin of human language into one about the nature of human self-expression. At the same time, he makes the question more specifically linguistic by emphasizing that thought is not just dependent on language as such, but indeed on the structure of particular languages as well: “Das Denken ist aber nicht bloß abhängig von der Sprache überhaupt, sondern, bis auf einen gewissen Grad, auch von jeder einzelnen bestimmten” (W, 3, 16.). This insight leads von Humboldt to the view that full understanding of the nature of language comes not from the study of particular languages, or even the comparative study of language as such. Such understanding can come only from an attempt to reach and to make sayable that as yet ineffable region that lies in the center (in der Mitte): the semantic space between all languages, which cannot be reduced to the idiom of any particular one of them. Von Humboldt crucially argues that this ultimately objective (and potentially culturally transcendent) domain of truth can, in our actual practice, only be approached subjectively: that is to say, from a culturally specific standpoint. In other words, we can do so only by using our linguistic and human imagination, even if we remain contingently constrained by the particular speech communities from which we come and the limited range of those we know:

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Ihre [d.h. der Sprachen] Verschiedenheit ist nicht eine von Schallen und Zeichen, sondern eine Verschiedenheit der Weltansichten selbst. Hierin ist der Grund, und der letzte Zweck aller Sprachuntersuchung enthalten. Die Summe des Erkennbaren liegt, als das von dem menschlichen Geiste zu bearbeitende Feld, zwischen allen Sprachen, und unabhängig von ihnen in der Mitte; der Mensch kann sich diesem rein objektiven Gebiet nicht anders, als nach seiner Erkennungs- und Empfindungsweise, also auf einer subjektiven Weise, nähern. (W, 3, 20)

For von Humboldt language, thought, and culture are inseparable. It follows that the search for this center is the task of both linguistic and cultural translation. His insistence that, in language as in culture, what is objectively true can only be approached by an act of subjective imagination is anything but an apology for relativism. The search for true translation—a language that will really fill that empty center—is the search for a regulative ideal in the Kantian sense: an ideal that guides our thoughts and practice precisely because it cannot and is not meant to be definitively realized.12 For von Humboldt, the ideal of translation is ethical as well as epistemological. It implies both an aspiration to a mode of human understanding unconstrained by any contingent cultural inheritance and an intellectual humility that recognizes that such an understanding—indeed its very idea—can only be approached from the particular cultural and linguistic communities that we all inhabit. This is why linguistic understanding and communication is both a reality and a task that is always still to be realized. It is the source of both the particularity of human cultures and the universally human, and, most important, it is the bridge between the two. For von Humboldt, the effort devoted to the study of language, and the literal and metaphorical community of translation that it engenders, becomes the touchstone of a community’s humanity: Die Verschiedenheit der Sprachen lässt sich als das Streben betrachten, mit welchem die in den Menschen allgemein gelegte Kraft der Rede, begünstigt oder gehemmt durch die den Völkern beiwohnende Geisteskraft, mehr oder weniger glücklich hervorbricht . . . das bessere Gelingen kann aber nämlich in der Stärke und Fülle der auf die Sprache wirkenden Geisteskraft überhaupt, dann aber auch in der besonderen Angemessenheit derselben zur Sprachbildung liegen. (W, 3, 389)

Von Humboldt’s idea of die Mitte—that ideal space in between languages, suggested but never exhausted by each and every particular tongue—has much in common with Andrea Polaschegg’s category of the foreign or the strange (das Fremde). For von Humboldt, we approach that

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potentially but never actually completely objective space only through the contingently subjective forms of our knowledge and perception: “der Mensch kann sich diesem rein objektiven Gebiet nicht anders, als nach seiner Erkennungs- und Empfindungsweise, also auf einer subjektiven Weise, nähern” (ibid.). For Polaschegg, we can approach das Fremde only through das Vertraute: what we provisionally know or, perhaps better translated, what we trust. In that process, we necessarily create difference; what is strange to us must become what is other than ourselves if we are to study it at all. But the object of the process is not to perpetuate difference, even if we can never definitively overcome it. It is to recognize the other in ourselves: to understand that what we trust and what is strange to us are two sides of the same coin. What we experience as foreign changes our understanding because it is already an implicit form of that understanding: our sense of the strangeness of others is the shadow side of our knowledge of ourselves. Von Humboldt’s idea of the heuristic power of translation is thus a paradigm of what Polaschegg calls “the power of non-understanding” (“Die Macht des Nicht-Verstehens”).13 That is to say, it entails an exposure to what is strange (das Fremde) that does not reduce strangeness (or the stranger) to the categories of difference and distance. As Polaschegg acknowledges, those were indeed the categories most relevant for the new discipline of Orientalistik that emerged in early nineteenth-century Germany, especially as the study of South Asian languages and cultures began to supplant the learning of Semitic languages, which had dominated the earlier discipline of Frühorientalistik, motivated by the interest of Protestant theology in source criticism. Those categories are certainly relevant to our understanding of how German orientalism emerged in its original historical context, but not to our attempts to develop an alternative paradigm now.14 Our task is not to perpetuate but rather to transcend that context. Von Humboldt’s principle of translation offers us a means to that end that has a powerful contemporary relevance, not least because it exceeds the idea of orientalism itself as a route to intercultural understanding.

II. Habermas and the Dialogue between Cultures The relevance of this principle to the practice of intercultural dialogue is clear. Von Humboldt’s idea of translation as a regulative ideal is echoed in the most recent work of Jürgen Habermas. Habermas’s most important contribution to the theory of intercultural dialogue is often taken to be his concept of herrschaftsfreier Diskurs, or “discourse without domination.” In Die Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (1981) he posits the idea of an ideal speech situation or ideale Sprachsituation, in which all the participants undertake and progressively strive to overcome the

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presuppositions of their own discourse, whether cultural or otherwise, with the ultimate aim of a discourse in which all presuppositions have been acknowledged and so overcome. Habermas’s early work is closely linked to the idea of critical theory associated with the Frankfurt School of philosophical sociology, especially its project of a “critique of instrumental reason.”15 This project, taking its cue from Horkheimer and Adorno’s Dialektik der Aufklärung (1947), aims to explore the instrumental and therefore political interests of knowledge inherent in the post-Enlightenment idea of reason, especially its potential reduction to and even identification with the technological rationality of the modern industrial world. Habermas’s analysis relies crucially on a critique of the totalizing tendency of instrumental reason, exemplified by the way in which post-Enlightenment rationality forces religious faith either to justify itself on the terms that that rationality defines, or to define itself as a hermetic sphere of pure belief, at odds with the rational public domain. In the modern world of instrumental reason, he argues, all traditions must become “neotraditions” or lose their cultural power. To be sure, this early project of Habermas is one of intellectual and cultural liberation. It does not aim at the negation of either faith or tradition, but rather at the exposure of the processes by which both, in Habermas’s view, are objectively negated by modernity. This is an enlightened project indeed, recalling Kant’s idea of a continuous process of enlightenment, in which the enlightenment of the ideal public sphere of intellectual exchange progressively works back on the real public sphere of civil society and so facilitates the spread of civic freedom.16 However, it also entails the claim that there can be an ultimately critical intellectual standpoint from which the entanglement of existing forms of rationality with hidden instrumental interests can be exposed and therefore transcended. At this stage of Habermas’s work, his theory is intended to define a truly critical discourse by which the ultimate end of discourse without domination—that is to say, a speech situation that is ideal because it is without presuppositions—is to be attained.17 It is not surprising that this early formulation led some of his critics to accuse Habermas of a form of intellectual totalitarianism in which a clash of discourses is not recognized as the normal condition of intellectual life but rather presented as a limitation to be overcome.18 In his later work, however, the idea of discourse without domination changes decisively. Especially in Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion (2005) and Der gespaltene Westen (2006), Habermas addresses much more explicitly the cultural interaction between the public and the private sphere and the implicit as well as explicit presence in modern discourse of inherited cultural traditions, especially the cultural articulation of religion. In Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion he moves beyond the Kantian dualism of the public and private use of reason that informed his earlier

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work, by acknowledging that our public use of reason in the Kantian sense—our formulation of argument in the public intellectual and political domain—is inescapably influenced by inherited cultural traditions and religious practices, which a liberal secular polity might regard as private. Equally important, he also acknowledges that our private consciousness itself, however self-conscious and informed, can never wholly exclude influence from the public cultural domain: Das scheinbar private Bewusstsein zehrt noch in den Ausdrücken seiner persönlichen Empfindungen und intimen Regungen von den Stromstößen, die es vom kulturellen Netz öffentlicher, symbolisch ausgedrückter und intersubjektiv geteilter Gedanken empfängt.19

In Habermas’s most recent work, the link between subjectivity and public communication is the recognition of human selfhood, a process that always entails the risk that recognition will be denied: Je weiter die Individuierung ins Innere hinein fortschreitet, um so tiefer verstrickt sich der Einzelne gleichsam nach außen in ein immer dichteres und fragileres Netz von Verhältnissen reziproker Anerkennung. Damit setzt er sich den Risiken der verweigerten Reziprozität aus. (ibid., 21)

Intersubjective communication, in other words, is not just the expression or objectification of selfhood, but it is also constitutive of the self, and its absence or distortion can damage or even prevent the process of individuation. However, Habermas’s concern with the public quality of language, which he relates to his own congenital difficulty in oral speech, leads him to privilege the written over the spoken word (ibid., 20). This might seem to reverse Derrida’s emphasis on the difference from the immediacy of speech—and therefore the illusion of authority—which is introduced by the written word.20 However, the reason for Habermas’s focus on the written word is not its real or supposed authority, but precisely its publicly accessible and therefore provisional character. The written word is public because it is the source of what Habermas calls “publicity” or “the public domain” (Öffentlichkeit): the world of intellectual exchange in which dialogue becomes discourse because it is potentially available to any participant.21 However, Habermas’s insistence on the inseparability of our sense of self from the possibility of intersubjective communication surely implies, as it did for Schleiermacher, the connection of hermeneutics to rhetoric, the act of interpretation to that of dialogue. For Schleiermacher, hermeneutics and rhetoric are connected because “every act of understanding is the inversion of a speech-act, during which the thought which was the basis of speech must become conscious.”22 Speech is indeed the more immediate mode of communication, but this very immediacy itself

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requires interpretation.23 If this were not the case, then the writer’s adequate attention to the fact that he or she is not speaking but writing would be enough to ensure that explication is superfluous: the fully explicit objective medium of the written language would dictate its own criteria of interpretation. But this is self-evidently not the case. The reason, of course, is that the written word, no less than its oral equivalent, implies a host of personal influences of which the writer, like the reader, may be conscious only imperfectly or not at all. Writing, like speech, expresses, and indeed embodies, not only our thoughts but also our selves—that nexus of individual self-consciousness and public recognition that is as much the precondition as it is the result of human communication. Habermas has recently drawn a close analogy between the idea of hermeneutic understanding, which he explicitly links to von Humboldt’s concept of translation, and the need for communication between different religious traditions and between such traditions and the secular public domain of modernity.24 For Habermas, a true acknowledgement of the difference between “speaking with one another or merely about one another”25 means that both the secular and the religiously committed interlocutor must be prepared to put their presuppositions into question: indeed, to suspend them without the certainty that a stable foundation for dialogue will be achieved at the end of the communication. Any true search for communication, like recognition, entails the risk of failure. But this is a risk intrinsic to all human dialogue, indeed all human interaction. For Habermas, hermeneutics depends on dialogue and not the other way around. “All interpretations,” he writes in The Divided West, “are translations in nuce,” because they all “have to bridge the gap between the hermeneutic pre-understandings of each side.”26 Such pre-understandings (Vorurteile)27 may entail widely differing presuppositions. However, the existence of such presuppositions does not necessarily preclude communication; indeed their recognition in dialogue, not their overcoming in interpretation, is the motive force of intercultural communication. Habermas’s deployment of the linguistic thought of von Humboldt, which is itself rooted in von Humboldt’s investigation of the languages and cultures of Asia, is therefore directed toward the task of intercultural communication now. It is about neither the construction nor the denial of difference, but rather the recognition and overcoming of what is strange in other cultures and in our own. The relevance of Habermas’s reception of von Humboldt is clear in his most recent discussion of communication between religious and secular worldviews in modernity. Habermas continues to argue that in a liberal secular polity positions advanced in the secular public sphere cannot be legitimized by theological presuppositions. Hence theses based on such presuppositions must be “translated” by philosophy into the kind of secular idiom that such a public sphere can accept. However, as Habermas

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now emphasises, it does not follow that such theses do not, in the minds of their proponents, still depend on theological postulates. Nor does it follow that the process of translation can ever be completely successful. At the same time, secular liberalism must be prepared to interrogate its own presuppositions as well, especially the possible hidden theological postulates of the liberal secular position itself. Moreover, this acknowledgement entails what Habermas calls a “cognitive burden”: a self-reflective overcoming of the rigid and exclusive secularist self-understanding of modernity. Such a cognitive burden, Habermas argues, has since the onset of secular modernity always been born by those in the West who do not accept its founding tenets. Now the descendants of those founding fathers must bear it as well: Historisch gesehen mussten religiöse Bürger lernen, zu ihrer säkularen Umgebung epistemische Einstellungen einzunehmen, die den aufgeklärten säkularen Bürgern mühelos zufallen. Diese sind ähnlichen kognitiven Dissonanzen gar nicht erst ausgesetzt. Aber auch ihnen bleibt eine cognitive Bürde nicht erspart, den ein säkularisches Bewusstsein ist für den kooperativen Umgang mit religiösen Mitbürgern nicht ausreichend. Diese kognitive Anpassungsleistung ist von der politisch-moralischen Forderung an die Toleranz der Bürger im Umgang mit gläubigen oder andersgläubigen Personen zu unterscheiden. Im Folgenden geht es nicht um das respektvolle Gespür für die mögliche existentielle Bedeutung der Religion, die auch von den säkularen Bürgern erwartet wird, sondern um die selbstreflexive Überwindung eines säkularistisch verhärteten und exclusiven Selbstverständnisses der Moderne.28

In other words, secular liberals too must understand that what Habermas calls “the institutional translation proviso”—the requirement that religious convictions and inherited practices be translated, if they are to influence the public realm, into terms that that realm will accept—does not mean the silencing of the language that it seeks to interpret, nor that any language of communication actually achieved will be the final and universal one. Habermas’s metaphor of translation is as significant for what it does not say as for what it does. It suggests a different kind of community of judgment from that which his earlier doctrine of “discourse without domination” (herrschaftsfreier Diskurs) entails. In both Habermas’s and von Humboldt’s terms, there is a significant sense in which the space between cultural and religious traditions in the modern world can never definitively be bridged by translation at all. That space is precisely the Mitte or center, which, as von Humboldt saw, it is the hermeneutic task to approach but never to posit as definitively realized. Habermas’s idea of the Mitte is both intellectually persuasive and heuristically relevant to the

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task of intercultural communication precisely because it is always a regulative, but can never be a constitutive, ideal.

III. Conclusion: The Relevance of the German Tradition to the Rethinking of Orientalism The idea of intercultural communication in the work of Wilhelm von Humboldt and Jürgen Habermas, especially its link to the comparative study of language and so to translation, suggests a model of oriental studies very different from the one Edward Said so powerfully exposed, and terms for the debate about multiculturalism very different from those generated at least in part by the reception of Said’s Orientalism. The most important intellectual context for the encounter between the German and oriental worlds at the beginning of the nineteenth century was the philosophy of German idealism, which was centrally concerned with the nature of personal and social identity and so with the problem of human communication. For Herder, Schleiermacher, and von Humboldt, no less than Habermas, whom they decisively influence, the other is not an a priori philosophical construct, but a reality encountered in human dialogue. The reprise of the German idealist tradition in Habermas’s most recent work is therefore important less because it makes a further contribution to the debate about orientalism than because it offers a very different model of intercultural communication that is highly relevant to, but cannot be identified with, the modern discipline of oriental studies. For both von Humboldt and Habermas, we can become culturally and linguistically competent in our own culture and speech community only through engagement with the multiple communities of others. Because it is rooted in actual dialogue, Humboldt’s idea of the plurality and difference (Verschiedenheit) of cultures and languages also bears on the problem of pluralism in its specifically modern sense. As scholars like Paul Gilroy and Bhikhu Parekh have pointed out, the discourse of intercultural dialogue can ignore one of the most important consequences of globalization: the possibility that an individual or group might be part of several cultural and linguistic communities at the same time.29 The Humboldtian and Habermasian model of human communication does not suggest that we should see ourselves as members of homogenous cultural blocks, seeking to communicate with interlocutors similarly conceived. On the contrary, for both von Humboldt and Habermas our linguistic and cultural fluency— both in our own language and in the interpretation of others—can grow only in and through our efforts at cultural and linguistic translation. Our proficiency in such translation is neither defined nor developed by our membership in a single culture, but precisely by our presence on the boundaries between several different ones.30

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Von Humboldt’s and Habermas’s model of intercultural dialogue also addresses a central concern of recent philosophical writing on multiculturalism. Their work suggests a decisive advantage of the German Enlightenment tradition over the French in our contemporary cultural situation, especially current debates about intercultural dialogue. The more psychoanalytically and semiotically oriented French discourse about multiculturalism, often associated with the work of Jacques Derrida and Julia Kristeva, which continues to exercise considerable influence on the disciplines of both oriental studies and cultural studies, has generated a discourse about cultural difference that is very far from becoming a source of intercultural understanding. To be sure, that tradition repeatedly draws our attention to our cultural and linguistic construction of the other: the act of différance by which we at once posit and yet defer the other of which we speak. However, this emphasis on the difficulty of speaking of the other can foreclose the possibility of speaking to an actual other: to her or to him. In 1997 Jacques Derrida in dialogue with Anne Dufourmantelle insistently raised what he called the question of the foreigner and the imperative to hospitality: Let us say yes to who or what turns up, before any determination, before any anticipation, before any identification, whether or not it has to do with a foreigner, an immigrant, an invited guest, or an unexpected visitor, whether or not the arrival is the citizen of another country, a human, animal, or divine creature, a living or dead thing, male or female.31

However, the extravagant generosity of this appeal betrays an immediacy that is false because it is abstract. For we cannot encounter the other without any provisional divining of difference; before difference, gradually and never completely, becomes the object of explicit dialogue. We are always, as hosts and guests, suspended between the particularity and the universality of the human. This polarity is not (as Derrida wrote) “an insoluble antinomy,”32 but rather the condition of all dialogue: that tentative encounter of subjectivities with each other that is the only way in which the humane center of cultural understanding can be approached. We should therefore be conscious of a danger in our constant talk of recognizing the other. In Étrangers à nous-mêmes (1988), Julia Kristeva raises the question of whether some of the most influential attempts to reconcile the rights of humanity (“les droits de l’homme”) with the rights of the citizen (“les droits des citoyens”) might paradoxically assure a long life to the figures of the “foreigner” and the “foreign.”33 The paradox, she explains, is inherent in the project of multiculturalism itself. That is the idea of a legally sanctioned coexistence in the same community of a plurality of cultural identities, in which what is private and what is public are inseparable. From this perspective, she writes, there is an imperative

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to respect what is private, indeed what is secret, in a community that can never be homogenous but can consist only in an alliance of singularities.34 Von Humboldt’s powerful conception of cultural and linguistic translation and its echo in the most recent work of Habermas offer a way of realizing that imperative of respect. That conception challenges the rigid Kantian dualism of the private and the public use of reason by recognizing that one is always implicit in the other. However, it also offers a model of human dialogue as potentially and therefore openly in excess of cultural difference. That is what Karl Popper called an “unended quest.”35

Notes 1

See Andrea Polaschegg, “Wenn Dichotomien reden könnten: Das Eigene und das Fremde,” in Der andere Orientalismus: Regeln deutsch-morgenländischer Imagination im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 39–49. 2

Ibid., 42: “Der Begriff [Fremdheit] bezeichnet das, was nicht unmittelbar oder selbstverständlich ist, worin wir uns denkend und handelnd nicht problemlos orientieren, was uns als erklärungsbedürftig begegnet. Schon Schleiermacher hatte . . . festgestellt, dass diese Fremdheit nicht notwendig jenseits der Grenzen des ‘Eigenen’ liegt, sondern immer da erscheint, ‘wo das sichere und vollkommene Verstehen nicht unmittelbar mit dem Vernehmen zugleich erfolgt.’” 3

See Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order (London: Simon and Schuster, 1997), esp. 19–78. 4

On the complex relationship between the concepts of “difference” and différance in the work of Derrida, see Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. Gayatri Chakravorty Spirak (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997), 63–65. See also Derrida, Writing and Difference, trans. and intro. Allen Bass (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1978), 13–14.

5

On this point see Wilhelm von Humboldt, Einleitung in das gesamte Sprachstudium, in Humboldt, Werke, ed. Andreas Flitner and Klaus Giel (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta, 1979), 5:129–30.

6

Ibid., 130.

7

On these “interests of knowledge,” see especially Dorothy M. Figueira, “The Romantic Aryans,” in Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorising Authority through Myths of Identity (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), esp. 27–49; also Thomas R. Trautmann, “Philosophy and Ethnology,” in Aryans and British India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 131–64; and Anil Bhatti, “August Wilhelm Schlegels Indienrezeption und der Kolonialismus,” in KonfliktGrenze-Dialog: Kulturkontrastive und Interdisziplinäre Textzugänge, Festschrift für Horst Turk zum 60. Geburtstag, ed. Jürgen Lehmann (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1997), 185–205. 8

See Humboldt, Theorie der Bildung des Menschen, in Werke, 1:234–40. The analogy between Humboldt’s idea of the education of the individual to universal humanity and the comparative study of language is especially clear in this essay.

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9 Herder, Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprachen, ed. Wolfgang Pross (Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag, 1978), 74: “Wenn es nun bewiesen ist, dass nicht die mindeste Handlung seines Verstandes, ohne Merkwort, geschehen könnte: so war auch das erste Moment der Besinnung, Moment zu innerer Entstehung der Sprache.” 10

Ibid., 75: “Und wie von diesem Zustande die Sprache anfängt, so ist die ganze Kette von Zuständen in der menschlichen Seele von der Art, dass jeder die Sprache fortbildet—Dieses grosse Gesetz der Naturordnung will ich ins Licht stellen.” 11

Humboldt, Über das vergleichende Sprachstudium in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprachentwicklung (1820–21), in Werke, 3:11. See also Humboldt, Über Denken und Sprechen, in Werke, 5:97–98: “Die Sprache beginnt daher unmittelbar und sogleich mit dem ersten Act der Reflexion, und so wie der Mensch aus der Dumpfheit der Begierde, in welcher das Subject das Object verschlingt, zum Selbstbewusstseyn erwacht, so ist auch das Wort da— gleichsam der erste Anstoß, den sich der Mensch selbst giebt, plötzlich still zu stehen, sich umzusehen und zu orientieren.” References to Humboldt Werke hereafter will be given parenthetically in the main text in the form (W, vol. number, page number). 12

For Kant’s definition of the regulative ideal in this sense, see Critique of Practical Reason and What Is Orientation in Thinking, in Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, trans. and ed. Lewis White Beck (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), 236–38, 295–96. On the relevance of this concept to the problem of “relativism” and cultural difference, see Dorothy Emmet, The Role of the Unrealisable: A Study in Regulative Ideals (New York: St Martin’s Press, 1994), 77–92, esp. 82–83. 13

Polaschegg, Der andere Orientalismus, 51.

14

See ibid., 50, 186.

15

See Jürgen Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1982), 1:489–534 (“Die Kritik der instrumentellen Vernunft”). 16 Kant, What Is Enlightenment?, in Kant, Critique of Practical Reason and Other Writings in Moral Philosophy, 292. 17

Habermas, Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns, 1:410–27.

18

The problems with Habermas’s early position are well summarized in Thomas McCarthy, Ideals and Illusions: On Reconstruction and Deconstruction in Contemporary Critical Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), 182–92. 19 Jürgen Habermas, Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion: Philosophische Aufsätze (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2005), 18. 20

See Derrida, On Grammatology, 10–18.

21

Habermas first develops the idea of publicity or the public sphere (Öffentlichkeit) in his early work The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (1965, Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit), which charts the development of the bourgeois public domain in eighteenth-century Europe, and what he sees as its gradual eclipse through incorporation into the modern state. However, the sense most relevant to his recent use of the term is the possibility of unfettered and universally accessible—because truly self-critical—public exchange.

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22 Friedrich Schleiermacher, Hermeneutics and Criticism and Other Writings, trans. and ed. Andrew Bowie (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 7. 23

Ibid., 21: “But it is not just writing [where this is the case]. Otherwise the art [of interpretation] would only have to become necessary via the difference between writing and speech, i.e. via the lack of the living voice and via the lack of other kinds of personal influence. But the latter themselves in turn need explication, and this always remains uncertain.” 24

See Habermas, The Divided West, ed. and trans. Ciaran Cronin (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2007), 15–18. See also Habermas on Schleiermacher, in Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion, 241–44. 25

Habermas, Ein Bewusstsein von dem, was fehlt: Eine Diskussion mit Jürgen Habermas, ed. Michael Reder and Josef Schmidt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 2008), 27. 26

Habermas, Divided West, 17.

27

Habermas uses this term in Schleiermacher’s sense: that is, the hermeneutic presuppositions—or, indeed, assumptions about what the word “presupposition” itself means—that any member of any cultural or religious tradition brings to bear in intellectual dialogue. This epistemologically fruitful but ethically and culturally neutral concept of prejudgement is later taken up by Gadamer. See Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, 2nd ed., trans. J. Weinsheimer and D. Marshals (New York: Continuum, 1989), 438–46. 28

Habermas, Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion, 144–45.

29

See Paul Gilroy, “Identity, Belonging, and the Critique of Pure Sameness,” in Between Camps: Race, Identity, and Nationalism at the End of the Color Line (London: Allen Lane, 2000), 97–133; and Bhikhu Parekh, Rethinking Multiculturalism: Cultural Diversity and Political Theory (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), 76–79, 126–39. 30

On this point see Samir Amin, Eurocentrism, Modernity, Religion, and Democracy: A Critique of Eurocentrism and Culturalism, trans. Russell Moore and James Membrez (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009), 175–77. Amin draws attention to the inadequacy of Edward Said’s critique of the “ideological construction of a mythical Orient,” if the result of that critique is a “false universalism” that fails to engage with the multiple “pre-judgements” that inform all intercultural dialogue. 31

Jacques Derrida, Of Hospitality: Anne Dufourmantelle Invites Jacques Derrida to Respond, trans. Rachel Bowlby (Stanford: Stanford University Press, [1997] 2000, 77. 32

Ibid.: “In other words, there would be an antinomy, an insoluble antinomy, a non-dialectizable antinomy between, on the one hand, the law of unlimited hospitality . . . and on the other hand, the laws (in the plural), those rights and duties that are always conditioned and conditional, as they are defined by the Greco-Roman tradition and even the Judeo-Christian one, by all of law and all philosophy of law up to Kant and Hegel in particular, across the family, civil society, and the State.” 33

Julia Kristeva, Strangers to Ourselves (Étrangers à nous-mêmes) (Paris: Gallimard, 1988), 194: “We should consider whether, in a jurisdiction that privileges

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the rights of man above those of the citizen, the occlusion of the notion of the foreigner might not, paradoxically, assure a long life to the idea of ‘foreignness.’” (My translation.) 34

Ibid., 195: “From this perspective there is an imperative to respect the private, indeed the secret, in a whole society that is not homogenous, but sustained as an alliance of particularities (dans un tout-social non pas homogene, mais maintenu comme une alliance de singularites).”

35 See Karl Popper, Unended Quest: An Intellectual Autobiography (London: Routledge, 1992), esp. 48–49.

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2: Friedrich Schlegel’s Writings on India: Reimagining Germany as Europe’s True Oriental Self Michael Dusche

T

HIS CHAPTER LOOKS AT how Friedrich Schlegel (1772–1829) developed and applied his particular kind of orientalist thinking and writing within the German1 geographical, linguistic, and cultural context of the early nineteenth century. Schlegel’s orientalism developed in Paris (1802–4) in the context of the Pan-European clamor against French cultural (later political) hegemony and against modernity, capitalism, urban life, and individualism. His reflections on the Orient, particularly the topos of “India,” became part of a process whereby Germany was reimagined as no longer being part of Western Europe but rather as the “true” oriental self of Europe.2 Much has been written on the romantics generally and their influence on early German nationalism, and many scholars have come to similar conclusions.3 None, arguably, has been able to reveal through a close reading of “Reise nach Frankreich” and Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier Schlegel’s use of Indian language and culture in contesting French cultural hegemony.4 This contribution seeks to compensate for this deficiency by bringing to bear the study of early nineteenth-century nationalism on the study of Schlegel’s engagement with India.5

I. Friedrich Schlegel in Paris Schlegel’s interest in Sanskrit studies spans a period of nearly forty years, during which an enthusiasm for India took hold of many German intellectuals. The period begins in 1791 with Georg Forster’s (1754–94) translation of Kalidasa’s Shakuntala and ends in 1827 with Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s (1770–1831) dismissive verdict on India.6 As a consequence of this heightened interest in India, in the course of the nineteenth century twenty-two university chairs of Indology were established in Germany, whereas in Britain, in the center of its colonial empire, only three such chairs existed.7

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Enthusiastic about what he called the “oriental renaissance,” Schlegel relocated to Paris in 1802 to learn Sanskrit. As a poet he was interested in translating Shakuntala from the original and researching the wealth of Sanskrit manuscripts in the Bibliothèque nationale.8 His language teacher was the Scottish naval officer Alexander Hamilton, who was at the time held in France as an enemy alien. Schlegel seems to have lived a secluded life in Paris. Apparently he could not, or did not want to, integrate into French society.9 Disgusted by the nouveau riche of the time of the Directorate and confronted with the insecurities of life in a city of the early modern age—the “capital of the universe” as he calls it in “Reise nach Frankreich”10—Schlegel seems to have experienced a form of culture shock.11 Schlegel complains that he could find in Paris “keine Fantasie, keine Kunst, keine Liebe, keine Religion.”12 He attributes this to the specific national character of the French and to the degeneration of Europe as a whole, which he thought was worse in Paris than in German-speaking lands. Remembering his travels through a largely agrarian Germany on his way to Paris, Schlegel abhors modern city life with its industry and commerce. He is taken by nostalgia for a time of joyous living and high morality, when people still lived in castles on hilltops, and recalls: Seitdem die Menschen herabgezogen sind zu einander und sich alles um die Landstraßen versammelt hat, gierig nach fremden Sitten wie nach fremdem Gelde, stehen die Höhen und Burgen verlassen. (RnF 1:8)

What is most significant here is the allusion to the “alien ways” of capitalist, urban modernity and the romanticizing of the feudal and agrarian world of the Middle Ages.13 How did Schlegel’s French contemporaries perceive him and his fellow romantics, and how did their perceptions in turn influence him and his opinions about France? Here Harro Zimmermann’s 2009 biography offers some valuable insights. In Germany, prior to his relocation to Paris, Schlegel had faced one defeat after another. His literary journal, Athenaeum, had flopped. His novel Lucinde had earned him the reputation of a corrupter of morals. As a consequence he was prohibited from entering the city of Göttingen.14 His circle of friends in Jena was quickly dissolving (FSSD 167–68). He was accused by his friends of living beyond his means and incurring huge debts (170). Hegel reproached him for not living up to what was expected of him as a university lecturer (174) and Clemens von Brentano (1778–1842) called him “lord of the empty pocket” (Herr Friedrich mit der leeren Tasche, 175), as he was not even able to meet the expenses of his doctoral dissertation through his lecture fees. Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767– 1835) called him “an airy figment of a human being” (Ein Luftgebilde

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von Menschen, 177). Financial strains increased when Schlegel and his partner Dorothea moved to Dresden. There they had to pay the discriminatory Judenzoll (municipal tax collected specifically from Jews) for Dorothea, the daughter of the philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. At that time she was not yet legally divorced from her husband, Simon Veit, and she had not converted to Christianity (176). A last chance was offered by Goethe, who helped Schlegel to stage his drama Alacros in Weimar. The performance was a failure and thus Schlegel and Dorothea packed up and traveled to Paris via the Wartburg castle, Frankfurt am Main, Alsace, and Metz (177). They reached Paris at the end of July 1802 and found a flat in the rue de Clichy in Montmartre (180). A hint as to how Schlegel perceived his new social environment is offered by Henri Chélin: Die arrogante Reizbarkeit mancher Franzosen, insbesondere Napoleons, gegenüber den exquisiten Hervorbringungen deutschen Geistes macht Schlegel des öfteren zu schaffen. Treibt ihn ein Gefühl der Machtlosigkeit in die zunehmende Distanz zu allem, was französischen Geist atmet.15

Lucinde, published a few years earlier, gives no indication of any anti-French sentiments. On the contrary, instead of praising the Nordic and Germanic over the French, as he later would, Schlegel denounces “Nordic bad habits” (nordische Unart) and the “jarring dissonances of our Nordic mother tongue” (die harten Übelklänge unsrer nordischen Muttersprache).16 In contrast, he associates the French with the positive attitudes of love and gallantry (Lucinde 38, 74). What might have caused Schlegel’s discomfort with Paris and the French? Was it a reaction to how the Germans were perceived by the French? The literature and published sources give little indication. Günter Oesterle mentions that reports made by the diplomat Carl Gustav Brinckmann (1764–1847), Rahel Varnhagen (1771–1833), and Heinrich von Kleist (1777–1811) had cautioned Schlegel and Dorothea against the French.17 Zimmermann points to the apparent alienation of the seven-thousand-strong German community in post-Directorial Paris (FSSD 184). Quoting from the memoirs of Sulpiz Boisserée (1783–1854), he reminds us of the uncertainty and violenceprone suspense in which the population was kept during these times. Foreigners slowly disappeared, theater visits and strolls through the city became less frequent, and everyone retired into their own circle of friends (FSSD 185). In any case, Schlegel and Dorothea didn’t move to Paris out of enthusiasm for France or French culture but for financial reasons and because it allowed them to live their unusual alliance undisturbed. They may have felt, as Dorothea writes, that they would always remain strangers there (FSSD 188). However, this cannot explain the vehement contempt, almost hatred, for everything French that appears in their

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writings. Schlegel calls the French “monkeys” and Dorothea calls them “stupid and pedantic.”18 They have so little sense of originality and taste, Dorothea writes in her diary, that they ignore the prettiest woman if she is not à la mode.19 She concedes “Auch die Menagerie hier ist sehr schön; besonders der Elephant hat mir viel Achtung und Theilnahme eingeflösst. Er ist unstreitig nächst mir derjenige welcher am wenigsten hier zu Hause gehört.”20 For Friedrich, though, the French are just robots (nulle Maschinen-Menschen, FSSD 185) devoid of all human traits. Schlegel’s developing contempt for French culture and people leads to an increasing valorization of everything German. For him, Paris is “eigentlich der Ort, wo man die Deutsche Literatur recht von neuem liebgewinnt.”21 He calls French scholars blinkered specialists and claims that Germans alone have an idea of the “holistic” approach to knowledge.22 While the French dislike everything foreign, Germans instinctively love everything alien. Whereas it is the national character of the French to be exclusively preoccupied with their own self, it is the prerogative of Germans to discover and familiarize themselves with other nations. Thus in contrast to Germans, the French have “absolutely no concept of universality.”23 For Zimmermann, the purpose of Schlegel’s journal Europa, published during his Paris years, consisted in fending off German feelings of inferiority vis-à-vis French culture and in promoting the programmatic idea that it was Germany’s destiny to save the Continent from its degeneration under French leadership (FSSD 193–94). In Zimmermann’s judgment, Schlegel thus separates the German romantic movement from the rest of contemporaneous European developments in the arts.24 From then on, instead of following the mainstream with its universalistic pretensions, Schlegel discovers remnants of some form of humanity that he perceives as universal on an even deeper level, buried, as it were, in an immemorial Indo-Germanic past. However, Oesterle reminds us that Schlegel was not yet thinking in simple nationalistic terms during his Paris years.25 As Schlegel writes in Europa: Ferne aber sey es von mir, diese Gründlichkeit im Egoismus als einen Zug in dem Charakter einer Nation ansehen zu wollen. Es bedeutet dieses nur die Stelle, die sie in der allgemeinen Europäischen Verderbtheit unseres Zeitalters einnimmt. Auch der erwähnte Mangel an Phantasie, der nie natürlich ist, sondern immer nur die Folge einer gewaltsamen oder zufälligen Ertödtung, kann nur dem Zeitalter, nicht der Nation als ein ursprünglicher Charakter zugeschrieben werden, wenn gleich nirgends diese Aeußerung des allgemeinen Uebels so auffallend erscheint als gerade hier. (RnF 1:27)

For Schlegel, the French nation displays most clearly only the general symptoms of the age, which he calls confused and middling. In a time of

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Manichaean struggle between the principles of good and evil, Paris, the modern capital of the world, becomes the new Sodom.26 In April 1804, just before he left Paris for Cologne, Schlegel wrote to his brother about his growing unhappiness in Paris, which he explained as founded in his hostility to Napoleon and his sympathy for Catholicism. Four years later in Cologne, Schlegel converted to Catholicism with his wife Dorothea. A few months later the two moved on to Vienna. To understand how uncommon the idea of nationalism was at the time, we have to remind ourselves that around 1800 the nexus between nation and politics was not self-evident. The Schlegel brothers were still thinking along the lines of an amalgamation of the French and the German nations. This European patriotism, as they called it (FSSD 181), was intended to create a politically united Europe. However, as Oesterle has convincingly argued, such an idea is not to be confounded with any peace-loving cosmopolitanism. Moreover, Schlegel had already begun to harbor a growing aversion to the French as “eine Nation, die immer stumpfer und brutaler zu werden verspricht” (FSSD 181). He therefore abandoned the idea of a synthetic Franco-German nation in favor of a Nordic nation ruling supreme over all of Europe. For Schlegel, the future Europe should revolve around Germany— Europe’s actual core in his view—and not France. He dreamed of being the writer, poet, and historian of that nation, which he imagined to be a united German and Nordic Empire to which all other European countries and nations would stand in a feudal relation of liegeman to lord.27 This blueprint of an anti-French and antimodern nationalism combines the idea of political sovereignty with an ethnically exclusive conception of the nation. It thus marks the inception of the idea of ethnic nationalism in Europe.28 As “ethnic” is a very loaded term, implying race as much as culture, a brief clarification is in order. Schlegel’s idea of nationhood is clearly not racial, let alone racist, in the modern sense of those words. It is important to remember the difference between modern notions of so-called scientific racism, which emerged in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and older notions of race, which are derived from aristocratic notions of nobility of blood. If Schlegel alludes to nations as communities of common descent, this is in imitation of these discourses whose purpose was to differentiate between noble and common. As Caspar Hirschi has pointed out, the German humanists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries had already adapted the idea of noble blood to the emerging national discourse. However, their aim was to persuade the German princes to defend popular interests and not to denigrate foreign races.29 Even though there may be certain continuities between medieval ideas of pure blood and modern racism, Schlegel’s discourse could not have been “racist” in the modern, social Darwinist sense.30

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Ethnicity, however, has also been defined along cultural lines, notably by Max Weber. Long before Benedict Anderson, Weber defined ethnic communities as “imagined” (geglaubte) communities, in contrast to genealogical communities of common blood.31 If Schlegel’s idea of nationhood was exclusive, it could only be so in this “imagined,” cultural sense.

II. Friedrich Schlegel’s Discovery of India The second part of this chapter attempts to show how Schlegel’s protonationalism was generated in a spirit of cultural defensiveness and German chauvinism. It used references to India, Asia, and the Orient to highlight its own venerability, evoking the East’s revered antiquity. Schlegel’s hopes for better knowledge of ancient India were directly linked to his search for a countermodel to modern—that is, French—society, which he perceived as fragmented and decaying. In his analysis, the Occident had been on the wrong track ever since antiquity. The Greek philosophers, according to Schlegel, had attempted to understand the world through rational reflection and had thereby fragmented it through these very categories of thought. In modern times, this allegedly led to the rationalism of the Enlightenment (for Schlegel especially, represented by Immanuel Kant [1724–1804]), the dictatorship of reason, and the idolatry of science and progress. For him this was the root cause of religious schism, loss of faith, and, eventually, the torments of the French Revolution. Only the Orient, in Schlegel’s view, was still capable of a holistic understanding of the world. Through religion, Schlegel thought, the East was still in touch with original unity or, in the words of German idealism, with the Absolute. It was thus from the Orient, which he identified with India, that Schlegel sought to derive the remedies for an ailing Occident. Through the study of ancient Indic civilization, Schlegel hoped to recover the lost key to primordial unity. In his treatise Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier,32 he postulated the linguistic kinship of Sanskrit and Persian with the European languages Latin, Greek, and German.33 The oldest surviving language, Sanskrit, was postulated as the progenitor of all other IndoEuropean languages. For Schlegel, the reference to Sanskrit also had a religious dimension. Since he conceived of the history of humanity as a process of continuous decline, Sanskrit was for Schlegel the language closest to “Uroffenbarung,” or primeval revelation (ÜSWI 105–6, 141, 197, 200– 202).34 This may seem confusing at first sight. Why would Schlegel look for the origins of religion in Sanskrit culture when ancient Indian religion seems so far removed from Christianity? In his treatise on Indian language and wisdom, Schlegel elucidates the connection between Mosaic and Indian religious documents. The Bible states clearly, he writes:

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daß der Mensch nach Gottes Bilde erschaffen sei, daß er aber die Seligkeit und das reine Licht, dessen er sich anfangs erfreute, durch eigne Schuld verlohren habe. Wenn die mosaische Urkunde . . . auf die Wege und Punkte hinweist, wie ein Strahl des ursprünglichen Lichtes, da die Nacht der Sünde und des Aberglaubens alle Welt umher bedeckte, dennoch durch göttliche Fügung sei gerettet und erhalten worden; so zeigen uns die indischen Urkunden die Entstehung des Irrthums, die ersten Ausgeburten, deren der Geist immer mehrere ergrübelte und erdichtete, nachdem er einmal die Einfalt der göttlichen Erkenntniß verlassen und verlohren hatte. . . . (ÜSWI 197–98)

Schlegel believed in a primeval revelation (Uroffenbarung) shared by all humans in a mythical past but also as a “Gefühl des Wahren,” an intuitive access to the divine (ÜSWI 106) in an eternal present. Subsequently, the divine gift is corrupted by human misuse, obscuration, and misinterpretation (Misbrauch des göttlichen Geschenks . . . Verdunklung und Mißdeutung der göttlichen Weisheit, ibid.), of which the Indian religious system gives the earliest proof.35 For Schlegel, ancient Indian religion may be the oldest system of superstition (das älteste System des Aberglaubens, ÜSWI 103); however, he cannot deny the ancient Indians the knowledge of the true God (wir können . . . den alten Indiern die Erkenntniß des wahren Gottes nicht füglich absprechen, ibid.). As an indicator of their partially correct knowledge, Schlegel takes the fact that the ancient Indians knew about the immortality of the soul (die Unsterblichkeit der Seele, ibid.). He defers, however, the answer to the question of why knowledge of the immortal soul should be taken as a proof for the acknowledgement of the single God of Abrahamic religion.36 The search for religion, which ultimately culminates in Schlegel’s conversion to Catholicism, is only one vector in a complicated parallelogram of motivations driving him during these years.37 Here, as well as in his deployment of the trope of “India” for the purpose of mapping the contours of a German national identity, Schlegel seems to be motivated by his own existential questions more than by a scholarly interest in theology.38 Faced with the dominant Greco-Roman genealogy of Western civilization, and the French who saw themselves as its heir and epitome, Schlegel was not the first to search the Orient for alternative genealogies of civilization. Early precursors were Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646– 1716) and Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88).39 Hamann’s disciple Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) speculated that national tongues expressed the soul or spirit of those who spoke them. In Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprache, published in 1772, Herder asserted that language did not mirror a preexisting metaphysical or empirical reality. Rather, it was the historical product of particular human communities. He located the act of linguistic signification in the soul of the people (Volk),

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suggesting that individual languages expressed the character of a specific people. Herder thus diverged from the predominant Enlightenment conception of language as a universal tool of communication. For him, language represented the mode of consciousness through which particular linguistic communities experienced the world and gave voice to their inner life. Herder considered each language to be a living organism with its own internal laws of change.40 In contrast to Herder, for whom all civilizations had equal value, Schlegel placed the ancient Indian civilization above all others. For Schlegel, Sanskrit was the quintessential “organic” language, which he rated as “noble” (edel) from its origin (ÜSWI 49–50, 55–58, 64, 73). This evaluative approach served a quite contemporary purpose. By demonstrating that European civilization had its roots outside Europe, Schlegel decentered Europe and relativized its singular claim to a civilization that it had inherited from its Greek and Roman antiquity. Thereby, he could escape the classicist mood of his time, in the light of which France outshone the rest of Europe.41 Schlegel tried to demonstrate that the so-called barbarians from the geographical area that the Romans had called Germania actually hailed from ancient India. Thus, for Schlegel, the Germanic tribespeople were not barbarian at all but rather a civilized nation that the Romans had unsuccessfully tried to subjugate.42 Not only were they equally civilized, but they had access to a heritage even more ancient than that of Greece and Rome. By that claim to an even older heritage, Schlegel believed the Germans could free themselves from French tutelage and so pave the way for their national ascendancy. For Schlegel as well as other contemporary German romantics, the German claim to cultural supremacy was founded in the alleged greater authenticity of German culture. They saw their language in unbroken continuity with Sanskrit, whereas French, the language the Germanic Francs had adopted in late antiquity when they settled down within the boundaries of the Roman Empire, was seen as a hybrid language between Romance, Celtic, and Germanic vernaculars—a motif prominently exploited by Fichte in Reden an die deutsche Nation.43 From this point of view, the French would appear, so to speak, as fake Germans who had betrayed their Germanic heritage and thereby forfeited any legitimate claim to be linked to the most ancient civilization, namely, that of India. In 1808, Schlegel offered the fruits of his Sanskrit studies in Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier. The first part contains Schlegel’s genealogy of Indo-European languages. The second part deals with Indian mythology and philosophy (“orientalische Denkart”), while the third part suggests how the study of Indian literature might benefit the study of history in general. The following account of Schlegel’s argument in the first part (Erstes Buch) will reveal a bias in Schlegel’s argumentation that can only be explained on the supposition that he wanted the German

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language to appear as a more direct descendant of Sanskrit than French. If this can be shown, it can be demonstrated that Schlegel was not interested in India for the sake of better scholarly knowledge alone. He used Indian antiquity chiefly as a screen on which to project his own resentments against the French and his discomforts with the modernity that they represented for him. Schlegel set out to prove that old Sanskrit is closely related to the languages of the Romans, the Greeks, and the Persians. He emphasized that this similarity is not only grounded in a great number of common word stems but also extends into the deep structure and grammar of the languages. He concluded that the similarity cannot therefore be based on accidental hybridization but rather points to a common origin of these languages. Furthermore, Schlegel thought that the comparison reveals that the Indian language is the oldest whereas the others are merely derived from it.44 His argument is straightforward. First he establishes the similarity between Indo-European languages, mainly Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German, by a great number of examples that he considers to be self-evident (ÜSWI 6–26). When he speaks of German, he really means the West Germanic languages, including English, but not the North Germanic languages of Scandinavia.45 For example, in discussing the similarities between Sanskrit “yūyon” and English “you,” Schlegel speaks of English as a form of German.46 In a second step, Schlegel lends credence to the hypothesis that, in the evolution of languages, the longer and presumably more complete form is generally older than the truncated and degenerate form.47 In all respects, morphologically, lexically, as well as grammatically, Sanskrit is more complex than Persian, Greek, Latin, or German, not to speak of its later derivatives like the modern Indian languages, the Romance languages with respect to Latin, and English with respect to German (ÜSWI 34–35). Therefore Sanskrit has to be the oldest of all.48 Schlegel’s model (S) of the derivation of the Indo-European languages from Sanskrit is given in figure 2.1 below.

Fig. 2.1. Schlegel’s model (S). ©Michael Dusche.

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The interesting question to ask at this stage is why Schlegel deliberately ignored another possibility, namely, that Sanskrit and German as well as the other Indo-European languages could have derived from a common progenitor: Proto-Indo-European as it is now called,49 and that therefore none is directly derived from the other. The alternative model (J) developed by William Jones (1746–94) is given in figure 2.2 below.

Fig. 2.2. Jones’s model (J). © Michael Dusche.

This model must have been known to Schlegel, for he refers to Jones and the proceedings of the Asiatick Society of Bengal in Calcutta (Schriften der calcutischen Gesellschaft) (ÜSWI 90). Jones’s argument had been that all Indo-European languages had a common progenitor. Thus he writes: The Sanscrit language, whatever be its antiquity, is of a wonderful structure; more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined than either, yet bearing to both of them a stronger affinity, both in the roots of verbs and the forms of grammar, than could possibly have been produced by accident; so strong indeed, that no philologer could examine them all three, without believing them to have sprung from some common source, which, perhaps, no longer exists: there is a similar reason, though not quite so forcible, for supposing that both the Gothick and the Celtick, though blended with a very different idiom, had the same origin with the Sanscrit, and the old Persian might be added to this family, if this were the place for discussing any question concerning the antiquities of Persia.50

Schlegel, however, gives a different rendering of Jones’s observation by submitting that Jones had meant that Sanskrit had been the progenitor of all of these languages.51 Moreover, throughout the text Schlegel rarely distinguishes between old and modern German. Only in a few instances does he refer to Low German (Niederdeutsch) and English as modern variants (Mundarten) of older forms of German. Thereby Schlegel’s notion of German becomes somewhat vague and ahistorical. His model (S) thus

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suggests that German (Deutsch/Germanisch) is derived from Sanskrit through fewer stages than French, which is derived from Sanskrit only indirectly via Latin. In twenty-five pages and with many more examples, Schlegel directly compares German (Deutsch/Germanisch) with Latin, Greek, Persian, and Sanskrit, as if they were all to be found on the same historical level52—whereas English and French are only mentioned as derivatives of German and Latin, respectively. He takes only eight pages and as few examples to distinguish between different historical stages of German and never compares French directly with Sanskrit.53 As we have seen, Schlegel was aware of the historical stages and branches of the Germanic languages, but instead of differentiating consistently between modern and older forms of German and between the various West Germanic branches of the genealogical tree, he used the general term “German” (Deutsch/Germanisch) and thereby blurred all historical and genealogical distinctions. As we now know, Jones was right in stipulating that all the old Indo-European languages had a common progenitor and that none was derived from the other. The standard model puts the Germanic and Romance languages on a par. Such a model, however, would have made it difficult for Schlegel to show the seniority of German vis-à-vis the Romance languages, notably French. While the French could only indirectly draw on the primordial heritage of ancient Sanskrit via Latin, the Germans had access to this valuable source via their own Germanic language. If in addition Sanskrit languages and culture were demonstrably closer, in a twofold mythical sense (see above) to primeval revelation, the Germans could present themselves as closer to Uroffenbarung than the latinized French and other southern European peoples, and thereby justify their claim to cultural and political leadership. Schlegel consequently propagated an alliance of the Orient and the North against the Occident, which he identified with the West and the South of Europe.54 The question remains as to what role Schlegel envisaged that the modern Orient, particularly India, should play in this vision of the future. Is India more than just a source of legitimacy for the claim to Germanic supremacy within Europe and has it any active part to play in the envisioned North-East confederation? There is no indication that Schlegel, unlike his brother Karl August and to a certain degree August Wilhelm,55 had any interest in modern India at all. He made use of ancient India in the national competition with France for cultural seniority among the European family of peoples and left modern India to the colonial powers of Western Europe.

III. Germany: Europe’s “True” Oriental Self The analysis of Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier lends plausibility to the thesis that Schlegel’s main interest was not India but rather

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Germany and its opposition to France. Schlegel’s use of India was, however, embedded in a larger European orientalist discourse. This section explores the status of his engagement with India in relation to this discourse. In the past decade, a number of studies have been published that inquire into the status of Schlegel’s orientalism. Some have called it a “positive” or “reverse” orientalism56 or an “internal colonialism.”57 However, his engagement with India did not involve an adoption of the reverse Indian perspective on Europe, with Germany being part of the West, but rather an evocation of a Germany as part of the East (but not identical to India) looking to the West as its other. This was a means that enabled the German romantics to establish a more intellectually persuasive and coherent idea of their own German identity. European discourse about what is called the Orient, besides attempting to reveal something about the Asian or African countries it purports to deal with, reflects the general attitudes toward history and modernity held by its leading proponents. Jürgen Lütt distinguishes two fundamental perspectives toward history and modernity that emerge in orientalist discourse in general and European discourse on India in particular. He calls these attitudes (1) the romantic attitude, and (2) the utilitarian attitude.58 The romantic attitude is marked by a generally pessimistic view of modern historical developments that sees history as a process of decline and degeneration. On the contrary, the utilitarian attitude reflects a generally optimistic view of modernity in which history appears as the process of perfection of mankind. Generally, Lütt goes on to point out, German orientalists have tended toward the romantic perspective whereas British orientalists have been more inclined toward the utilitarian view. With respect to India, German Indologists had a penchant for positive, romanticizing conceptions of India, whereas British Indologists were inclined to highlight India’s social and cultural problems and so its need to be governed, modernized, and developed. The difference in attitude between German and British Indologists is partly due to the fact that the German Indologists originally had less direct access to the subcontinent, whereas British Indology was embedded in the colonial enterprise from the beginning. British orientalists were involved in the empire’s attempts to modernize British India. They confronted contemporary issues such as the burning of widows, widow remarriage, and the codification of Hindu and Muslim law. By contrast, German Indologists were less concerned with such practical matters.59 Their main concern was with European civilization, European modernity, and the place of German culture, and Germany as an emerging nation, in a modern European setting. From their perspective, European civilization was on the decline because of the ruptures caused by the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution, which resulted in religious disunity and political fragmentation; for them India stood for everything

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Europe had been but was no longer. India was ancient whereas Europe was modern, India was one whereas Europe was fractured, and India preserved, in the eyes of the romantics, some elements of the original divine revelation that Europe was about to lose. All this resulted in what Ronald Inden has called Germany’s “positive Orientalism,” in contrast, for example, with the “negative Orientalism” of James Mill (1773–1836).60 In contrast to Jones, who in 1784 had founded the Asiatick Society of Bengal in Calcutta and who was fascinated by the treasures of his Sanskrit library, Mill perceived India as backward and plagued by superstition, Brahmanism, and social oppression. In 1819, Mill became an employee and leading officer of the British East India Company and had considerable influence on the policies of the company for the following seventeen years. Figures like Mill best reflect the image of the orientalist as portrayed by Edward Said in his critical study Orientalism (1978). In personae like his, the nexus between knowledge and power became obvious. According to Said, orientalism as an academic discipline is geared toward producing the necessary knowledge and legitimation for colonialists to rule countries like India. Depicting India as backward justified British colonization just as expert knowledge of its society and laws facilitated colonial rule. This nexus was of course absent in the German case because of the lack of colonies in the region, but colonial orientalism nevertheless had its impact on Germany. Notably Hegel and Marx were influenced by the utilitarian image of India as a society stagnating in an “Asiatic mode of production.”61 To a certain extent, Said exempts German orientalism from the allegation of seeking knowledge for the sole purpose of attaining power over the other. As he claimed, Germany did not have a “protracted sustained national interest in the Orient,” and thus no orientalism of a politically motivated sort (O 19). As Jennifer Jenkins has pointed out, German orientalism was interested in the professional study of texts rather than in the exercise of colonial power,62 but for Said it had “in common with Anglo-French and later American Orientalism . . . a kind of intellectual authority over the Orient” (O 19). This comparatively positive depiction of German orientalism by Said and subsequent authors has been qualified and reevaluated recently by a number of scholars.63 While, for the colonial powers, orientalism represented “a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient” (O 3), for the Germans it traditionally functioned as an intellectual construct for their own national audience, especially in times of crises and conflict. At the time of the Turkish wars (1526–1699) its purpose was “to define the contours of the history and politics of the evangelical, confessional, and religious world in later Reformation Germany.”64 During the anti-Napoleonic wars, it served to model the incipient German nation on an oriental antiquity that was more ancient and hence truer to received conceptions of human origin than even

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Greek and Roman antiquity.65 German orientalism was thus interested in giving credence and coherence to a conception of a German nation that, once politically unified, would merit a position equal to or even greater than that of other major European powers. It is true that German Indology had an obvious colonial context in that it was born out of British and French colonial scholarship, from which it received not only information and texts but also its analytical concepts. However, the notion of Schlegel’s orientalism as a form of “internal colonialism,” so termed by Sheldon Pollock (1993) and reiterated by Robert Cowan (2008) and Nicholas Germana (2010), does not seem convincing.66 In what sense did the notion of colonizing or being colonized enter the discourse of the romantics? Schlegel, like others such as Kant and Herder before him, was clearly aware of the colonial phenomenon. But in what sense could Schlegel have “identified with the oriental victims of western imperialism,” as Germana and others suggest,67 when he was so little interested in modern India and his Indian contemporaries? Rather than speaking of “Schlegel’s efforts to define Germany as the oriental other of Europe,” as Germana does,68 one must speak of the inverse, namely, of Schlegel attempting to define Germany as the true oriental self of Europe. In large part, Schlegel’s orientalism consisted of an inversion of values commonly associated with the staple categories of European orientalism. The notion of caste, for instance, which is associated with backwardness in utilitarian views of India, is turned by Schlegel into a positive notion associated with a form of political organization that seemed desirable to him, namely, the old European corporatist society. Schlegel believed that the medieval hierarchy of estates (Christian clergy, warring noblemen, trading townsfolk, and toiling farmers) reflected its origin in the Indian caste system (with Brahmin priests, warring Kshatriyas, trading Vaishyas, and toiling Shudras as their equivalents).69 In his later turn toward medievalism, Schlegel continued to romanticize the feudalism of the Middle Ages as the golden age of German history.70 The emphasis on sacred texts and on reconstructing a primordial India lost in time originated from both the Christian framework within which Indian religions were perceived, and from the contribution of Indian informants, usually Brahmins.71 But Schlegel used these texts and analytical concepts for quite different purposes than those pursued by British or French orientalists. Tzoref-Ashkenazi is therefore correct in his judgment that “Schlegel’s view should be examined in the context of early German nationalism.”72 This is not to say, however, that Schlegel himself can be called a nationalist. For this, his political ideas were far too fluid, beginning with republicanism, moving on to ideas of a political union first with France, then with the North and the East, and finally culminating in his reversion to aristocratic politics. In 1815, Schlegel joined the service of Metternich as a writer of Austrian propaganda and a member of the Austrian delegation

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to the Diet of Frankfurt and the Congress of Vienna. He chose the Holy Alliance over republicanism and ethnic nationalism. Between 1802 and 1808, Schlegel had turned from a republican literary critic into a Catholic conservative with the kind of nationalist ideas that simultaneously emerge in the work of Müller (1809) and Fichte (1808).

IV. Conclusion Schlegel developed resentment against several aspects of modernity: urbanization, industrialization, and commercialization, and came, finally, to resent everything French as the embodiment of this modernity: there was indeed a French hegemony in cultural affairs and French was the language of European elite culture and diplomacy.73 The discussion has sought to highlight the reasons behind Schlegel’s motivation to counter the overbearing influence of French culture and to carve out a place for German language and culture as a source of German national self-esteem: oriental studies offered him a way out from this predicament. Schlegel’s principal motivation for his engagement with Sanskrit could not have been an interest in ancient India alone. The blurring of historical and genealogical distinctions within the family of Germanic languages and the repeated, direct comparison of German with ancient and venerable languages like Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, and Latin raises doubts about the objectivity of his approach when at the same time French and English figure only as languages derivative of one of those (Latin, German). By representing India as a source of venerability, Schlegel deliberately played up the importance of German in the context of the Indo-European language family. For him as well as for other German writers at the time, this could have been a welcome source of pride and seen as an advantage over France in a European competition for national superiority.74 Schlegel’s particular kind of orientalism can be placed within the wider contexts of European orientalism by way of contrast. In critiquing terms like “positive orientalism” (Inden) and “internal colonialism” (Pollock), the idea of “Germany as the true oriental self of Europe” was evoked as a way to characterize Schlegel’s use of India. So, without implying any causal relationship with later uses of romantic thought by German nationalists, Schlegel’s writings were part of a discourse of identity that uses the debasement of the French other to raise the esteem and the coherence of the German self. When in 1808 Fichte delivered his Reden an die deutsche Nation, the disparagement of the French was part and parcel of the valorization of the German. With this development, the discourse on national identity risked losing the politically emancipatory element of eighteenth-century liberal republicanism that had still been present in the writings of Kant and Herder. As historians of German nationalism have pointed out, the ideal community

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of romanticism appealed to its contemporaries because it promised to unite everyone organically without conflict or friction.75 Nationalism so conceived, however, sacrificed individual liberty for the sake of collective liberation. It replaced the republican notion of political society with the concept of an organic community.76 Romantic political thinking appears to be strangely apolitical here, as it denies the legitimacy of conflicts of interests as an acceptable part of any democratic political process. It can perhaps be seen as an expression of a certain lack of political maturity in its often noble and upper-class proponents who had little experience with democratic processes and, if in power, feared losing their hereditary sovereign rights. The prospect of a free interplay of political forces in the absence of a corresponding political culture of democracy must have seemed threatening to Schlegel’s contemporaries. Of course, contemporary democratic movements existed nevertheless and they could draw on democratic traditions hailing from certain communities of farmers and burghers since the Middle Ages. This discussion of Schlegel also resonates with contemporary debates. The question as to whether tribes who spoke some variant of Proto-IndoEuropean filtered into India in the second millennium BCE, or whether Proto-Indo-European originated in India and spread outward into Central Asia and beyond, is still discussed in India today.77 Hindu nationalists in particular oppose the standard theory of Indo-European migration into the subcontinent. Since Schlegel was the first to propose the idea of a migration of Indo-European speakers out of India,78 the question arises as to whether any line of influence can be traced from the German romantic to today’s Hindu supremacism. Two recent studies have tried to chart the dissemination of German romantic ideas in the Indian subcontinent. Carsten Wieland (2006) and Tobias Delfs (2008) point to a conglomerate of European ideas that affected the development of ethnic nationalism in India.79 According to both, the ideas of the German romantics particularly impacted on the ideologues of Hindu nationalists such as M. S. Golwalkar (1906–73) and V. D. Savarkar (1883–1966). The latter studied in England from 1906 to 1910 and was imprisoned until 1924 in the Andaman Islands, where he read Western political theory and taught nationalism to his fellow prisoners. Furthermore, Wieland and Delfs discern a contemporary affinity between Hindu nationalism and European fascism based on common ideological reference points. These references include Schlegel, Fichte, and later thinkers such as Heinrich von Treitschke (1834–96) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) as well as British utilitarians like John Stuart Mill (1806–73) and social Darwinists such as Herbert Spencer (1820–1903) and Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95). This far-reaching thesis, however, stands in need of corroboration by further research. In particular it would have to take into account the mediation of German romanticism, nationalism, and idealism

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via the British by way of the trope of “Germanism”80 prevalent in British scholarly discourses of the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.

Notes I wish to express sincerest gratitude to the participants of the Second International Symposium of the Occident-Orient Research Network at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna (3–5 April 2011) for their helpful comments, for the editorial care received from James Hodkinson and John Walker, and for the helpful comments of three referees, including Johannes Zechner and Robert Lemon. The author alone, of course, is responsible for whatever mistakes that remain. 1

Here I am using the term “German” as shorthand for the German-speaking lands of the Holy Roman Empire. 2

The formulation is August Wilhelm Schlegel’s: “Deutschland als der Orient Europas,” in Schlegel, Kritische Schriften und Briefe, ed. Edgar Lohner (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1962–74): 4:37. 3

The relevant strand of literature begins in the twilight of the Third Reich with Henri Brunschwig, La crise de l’état prussien à la fin du XVIIIe siècle et la genèse de la mentalité romantique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1947); and Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism: A Study in Its Origins and Background (New York: Macmillan, 1944), and “Romanticism and the Rise of German Nationalism,” The Review of Politics 12, no. 4 (1950): 443–72, which attempt to lay bare the intellectual roots of national socialism. See also Michael Dusche, “Origins of Ethnic Nationalism in Germany and Repercussions in India,” Economic and Political Weekly 45, no. 22 (2010): 37–46. 4

Herling, “German Gita,” offers a close reading of Über die Sprache (160–73) and contextualizes it in the discourse of European decadence (151). He thereby obscures the fact that European decadence is largely coterminous with French decadence owing to the overwhelming influence of French culture all over Europe. As a consequence, he misses out on the unequal treatment by Schlegel of the various European branches of the Indo-European language family, which removes French and English by one generation from Sanskrit as compared to German. 5

See Dusche, “Origins of Ethnic Nationalism”; “Ethnischer Nationalismus: Eine kritische Betrachtung,” in German Studies in India: Aktuelle Beiträge aus der indischen Germanistik/Germanistik in Indien, ed. Dorothea Jecht and Shaswati Mazumdar (Munich: Iudicium, 2006), 50–67; and “Die Geburt des Nationalismus aus dem Geist der Romantik,” Akten des XII. Internationalen Germanistenkongresses Warschau 2010. Vielheit und Einheit der Germanistik Weltweit, ed. Franciszek Grucza et al. (Frankfurt: Lang, 2012), 23–27. Also Vasudha Dalmia-Lüderitz, “Reconsidering the Orientalist View,” India International Centre Quarterly 20, nos. 1/2 (1993): 93–114, discerns a “German national interest in India,” but misses out on the anti-French and anti-Western undertones of Schlegel’s engagement with India (101). Instead of realizing his construction of the German self as an oriental one, she stays with the notion of Germany being essentially occidental: “the Indian ‘Orient’ was part of Occidental Germany” (106–7).

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Taking Germany’s Westernness for granted would be an anachronism according to my reading of Schlegel. 6

Anil Bhatti, “Der deutsche Indiendiskurs: Ambivalenzen im deutschen Orientalismus des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts,” in Jecht and Mazumdar, German Studies in India, 23–38, points to the near contemporaneity of Hegel’s verdict with Thomas Babington Macauley’s infamous dictum that “a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia” in his “Minute of 2 February 1835 on Indian Education,” Macaulay, Prose and Poetry, selected by G. M. Young (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1957), 721– 29, here 721. Ironically, during the period of the oriental renaissance in Germany we witness the “death of Sanskrit” in India: Sheldon Pollock, “The Death of Sanskrit,” Comparative Studies in History and Society 43, no. 2 (2001): 392–426. 7

Information from a lecture by Hermann Kulke at the award of the Padma Shri on 7 April 2010, the India International Center, New Delhi. According to Sheldon Pollock, “both the investment and the production of pre-1945 Germany in Indological research surpassed that of the rest of Europe and America combined.” Pollock, “Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power beyond the Raj,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament: Perspectives on South Asia, ed. Carol A. Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1993). 8

To compensate the defeat at the battle of Plassey (1757) and the decline of their influence in India, the French took to Sanskrit studies, and by 1800 Paris had become the European hub of scholarship on India. Cf. Raymond Schwab, La renaissance orientale (Paris: Payot, 1950). 9

Chen Tzoref-Ashkenazi, “India and the Identity of Europe: The Case of Friedrich Schlegel,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67, no. 4 (2006): 725. 10

Friedrich Schlegel, “Reise nach Frankreich,” in Europa (Frankfurt am Main: Wilmans, 1803), 1:5–40. Hereafter cited as RnF and volume: page number. 11

Réne-Marc Pille, “Von der Seine zum Ganges: Paris als Geburtsstätte des Indienbilds von Friedrich Schlegel,” in Akten des XI. Internationalen Germanistenkongress Paris 2005, ed. J.-M. Valentin (Frankfurt am Main: Lang), 9:26. 12

See Georg Hirzel, “Ungedruckte Briefe an Georg Andreas Reimer,” Deutsche Revue über das gesamte nationale Leben der Gegenwart 18, no. 4 (1893): 100, quoted in Tzoref-Ashkenazi, “India and the Identity of Europe,” 713–34, here 725. 13

This is not to suggest that Schlegel or the romantics themselves were not modern—on the contrary, the critique of modernity is almost an indicator of a modern mindset. See Shaswati Mazumdar, Claudia Wenner, and Sharmishtha Lahiri, eds., Romanticism and Modernity: Conceptions of Art, Society, and Politics in the Modern World (New Delhi: Aryan Books, 2007), 4, on “how a movement which sought to respond with modern ideas to the challenges of the modern age could come to be seen as the very antithesis of the modern.” 14

Harro Zimmermann, Friedrich Schlegel oder die Sehnsucht nach Deutschland (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2009), 167. Cited in the first instance as FSSD and page number; subsequent page references to this work by Zimmermann are given in parentheses throughout this parapgraph.

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15

Henri Chélin, Friedrich Schlegels “Europa” (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1981), quoted and emphasis added by Zimmermann, Friedrich Schlegel, 180.

16

The quotations are from Schlegel, Lucinde, in Friedrich Schlegel: Lucinde: Ein Roman: Mit Friedrich Schleiermachers Vertrauten Briefen über Friedrich Schlegels “Lucinde,” ed. Ursula Naumann (Munich: Goldmann, 1985), 32, 18. Lucinde was first published in 1799. 17

Günter Oesterle, “Friedrich Schlegel in Paris oder die romantische Gegenrevolution,” in Goethezeitportal (http://www.goethezeitportal.de/db/wiss/schlegel_ fr/oesterle_revolution.pdf, accessed on 28 June 2013), 1–16, here 3. Originally published in in Les Romantiques allemands et la Révolution française—die deutsche Romantik und die Französische Revolution, ed. Gonthier-Louis Fink, Strasbourg: Université des Sciences Humaines, 1989, 163–79. 18

Ibid., 3.

19

“Sie haben hier so wenig eigenen Sinn und Originalität des Geschmacks, dass sie die hübscheste Frau ganz gleichgültig ansehen, wenn sie nicht etwa Mode ist” (ibid., 163–79). 20

Ibid., 4.

21

Ibid., 2.

22

“Studium im Ganzen” (ibid., 8).

23

“ganz und gar keinen Begriff von . . . Universalität” (ibid., 9).

24

“Der Frankreichreisende Friedrich Schlegel spaltet in der Hauptstadt der Moderne die deutsche Romantik von der europäischen Kunstentwicklung ab, nur das Eigene kann noch den Anspruch auf das Universale erheben” (FSSD 194). 25

Oesterle, “Friedrich Schlegel in Paris,” 5.

26

Ibid., 6.

27

“Vereinigung aller Deutschen Nordischen Reiche zu einem einzigen—und Abhängigkeit (feudale) aller anderen Länder und Nationen in Europa von dieser—das wäre das grosse Ziel.” Note by Schlegel from 1803 in ibid., 10. 28 Dusche, “Origins of Ethnic Nationalism”; “Ethnischer Nationalismus”; and “Geburt des Nationalismus.” 29 Caspar Hirschi, Wettkampf der Nationen: Konstruktionen einer deutschen Ehrgemeinschaft an der Wende vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2005), 498. 30

Although I do not wish to imply any causal relation between Schlegel’s IndoGermanism and subsequent racist uses of the “Aryan” myth, the trope of the “Aryan” was of course influenced by Schlegel (see Dorothy M. Figueira, Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority through Myths of Identity (Albany: SUNY Press, 2002); and Reza M. Pirbhai, “Demons in Hindutva: Writing a Theology for Hindu Nationalism,” Modern Intellectual History 5, no. 1 (2008): 27–53). Edward Said, in Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1978), had criticized Schlegel for outlining a “proto-racist theory of origins that was eventually to have devastating effects” (99; hereafter cited as O and page number). However, as Herling points out in, “German Gita,” the “proto-racist” character is not evident in Schlegel’s work (169). Herling concludes: “While Friedrich Schlegel’s thinking may

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have been appropriated in order to contribute to what would become a coherent ‘racist’ discourse, it does not represent a pure, primordial origin for this damaging set of views” (170). 31

“Wir wollen solche Menschengruppen, welche auf Grund von Aehnlichkeiten des äußeren Habitus oder der Sitten oder beider oder von Erinnerungen an Kolonisation und Wanderung einen subjektiven Glauben an eine Abstammungsgemeinsamkeit hegen, derart, daß dieser für die Propagierung von Vergemeinschaftungen wichtig wird, dann, wenn sie nicht ‘Sippen’ darstellen, ‘ethnische’ Gruppen nennen, ganz einerlei, ob eine Blutsgemeinsamkeit objektiv vorliegt oder nicht. Von der ‘Sippengemeinschaft’ scheidet sich die ‘ethnische’ Gemeinsamkeit dadurch, daß sie eben an sich nur (geglaubte) ‘Gemeinsamkeit’ ist. . . . Die ethnische Gemeinschaft . . . kommt . . . vor allem . . . der politischen Vergemeinschaftung, fördernd entgegen. Andererseits pflegt überall in erster Linie die politische Gemeinschaft, auch in ihren noch so künstlichen Gliederungen, ethnischen Gemeinsamkeitsglauben zu wecken und auch nach ihrem Zerfall zu hinterlassen, es sei denn, daß dem drastische Unterschiede der Sitte und des Habitus oder, und namentlich, der Sprache im Wege stehen.” Max Weber, “Ethnische Gemeinschaftsbeziehungen” (1922), in Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft (Tübingen: Mohr, 1985), part 2, chap. 4, 237–38. 32

Friedrich Schlegel, Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier: Ein Beitrag zur Begründung der Alterthumskunde nebst metrischen Übersetzungen indischer Gedichte (Heidelberg: Mohr und Zimmer, 1808). Hereafter cited as ÜSWI and page number. 33

According to Thomas R. Trautmann, Aryans and British India (New Delhi: Yoda Press, 2004), Schlegel’s Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier had a vast effect in fomenting German Indomania and Sanskrit study (139). 34

Pascale Rabault-Feuerhahn, L’archive des origines: Sanskrit: Philologie, anthropologie dans l’Allemagne du XIXe siècle (Paris: Cerf, 2008), 66–78.

35 “Es ist das erste System, das an die Stelle der Wahrheit trat; wilde Erdichtungen und grober Irrthum, aber überall noch Spuren der göttlichen Wahrheit und der Ausdruck jenes Schrekkens und jener Betrübniß, die der erste Abfall von Gott zur Folge haben mußte” (ÜSWI, 106–7). 36

“Den tiefverborgenen Grund aufzuhüllen, warum diese klare und gewisse Ueberzeugung von der Unsterblichkeit mit der Erkenntniß des wahren Gottes unmittelbar verbunden war, ist hier der Ort nicht” (ibid., 104). For further discussion on this point, see Gary Handwerk, “Envisioning India: Friedrich Schlegel’s Sanskrit Studies and the Emergence of Romantic Historiography,” European Romantic Review 9, no. 2 (1998): 235. 37 Bradley L. Herling points to a possible psychological motivation for Friedrich (and August Wilhelm) Schlegel’s interest in India, namely, to revisit the site of the loss of their brother Karl August (d. 1889 in Madras), but urges that it be properly contextualized. Herling, “The German Gita: The Reception of Hindu Religious Texts within German Romanticism (1790–1830)” (PhD diss., Boston University, 2004), 136. 38 For a similar assessment, see Tomoko Masuzawa, The Invention of World Religions, or How European Universalism Was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism

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(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), 154–55, although I disagree with her characterization of Schlegel’s orientalism as “a lofty spiritual mission.” 39

See the following: Sebastiano Timpanaro, “Friedrich Schlegel and the Beginnings of Indo-European Linguistics in Germany,” in Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier: Ein Beitrag zur Begründung der Altertumskunde, ed. E. F. K. Koerner (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1977), 11–48; Chris Hutton, ed., History of Linguistics (London: Routledge, 1995), vol. 1, introduction; Tuska Benes, “Comparative Linguistics as Ethnology: In Search of Indo-Germans in Central Asia, 1770–1830,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 24, no. 2 (2004): 117–32; Hirschi, Wettkampf der Nationen; and Caspar Hirschi, The Origins of Nationalism: An Alternative History from Ancient Rome to Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 40

Herling, “German Gita,” 43–62.

41

Anne-Marie Thiesse, La création de identités nationals: Europe XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Seuil, 2001), 23–25. 42

Chen Tzoref-Ashkenazi, “The Nationalist Aspect of Friedrich Schlegel’s ‘On the Language and the Wisdom of the Indians,’” in Sanskrit and “Orientalism”: Indology and Comparative Linguistics in Germany, 1750–1958, ed. Douglas T. McGetchin et al. (New Delhi: Manohar, 2004), 107–30, here 119. 43

Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Reden an die deutsche Nation (Berlin: Realschulbuchhandlung, 1808), 133–44. 44

Note that Schlegel received Sanskrit in its Bengali pronunciation, where often “a” turns into “o”; for example, the Devanagari “Sanskritam” [संस्कृतं] is spelled Bengali “Sonskrito” [সংস্কৃত] by Schlegel (ÜSWI 3); likewise Devanagari “manushia” [मनुष्य] turns into Bengali “Monuschyo” [মানুষয়] “der Mensch” (7), and “atman” (आत्मन्) into “Atmoh” (আত্মা) “was sich in ατμη und Athem ganz erhalten hat” (14). 45

Schlegel distinguishes between West Germanic (“deutscher Zweig”) and North Germanic (“skandinavischer Zweig”): “Nehmen wir vollends die Grammatik der ältern Mundarten hinzu, des Gothischen und Angelsächsischen für den Deutschen, des Isländischen für den skandinavischen Zweig unsrer Sprache . . .” (ÜSWI, 33). 46 “Dagegen entspricht das schon angeführte yūyon dem Deutschen in der englischen Form you” (ÜSWI, 21). 47

“Doch zeigt auch hier [in German] oft die unmittelbare Vergleichung [with truncated Persian terms], daß die indische Form die ältere sei. Aus rōktoh oder rōhitoh kann wohl roth, aus Schleshmo—Schleim, aus vohulon—viel werden, da die Worte wie das Gepräge des Geldes im Gebrauch und Umlauf sich leicht abschleifen und verwischen, aber nicht umgekehrt” (ÜSWI, 15). “Die kunstreiche Structur geht durch die Abschürfung des gemeinen Gebrauchs besonders in einer Zeit der Verwilderung gern verlohren” (25). 48

Although it is not directly relevant for Schlegel’s concern with German versus French and English, it should be mentioned that the distinction drawn by Schlegel between inflected and agglutinative languages has contributed to another theory of supremacy, that of Indo-European versus non-Indo-European, especially

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Aryan versus Semitic languages. As Figueira notes, Schlegel “projected onto Sanskrit what he could not find in Indian philosophy and religion. Unfortunately, the divine status he accorded to inflected Sanskrit [and thereby indirectly to German and other European languages] necessitated a less than divine origin for what he perceived as the agglutinative languages [like Chinese, Arabic or Hebrew].” Figueira concedes, however, that “this was clearly a negative by-product, rather than a motivating factor” (Figueira, Aryans, Jews, Brahmins, 30). See also Rabault-Feuerhahn, L’archive des origines, 66–78). 49

Edwin F. Bryant, The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture: The Indi-Aryan Migration Debate (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 50

Third annual discourse before the Asiatick Society of Bengal, 2 February 1786 (William Jones, “Discourse on the Hindus,” Asiatick Researches 1 [1788]: 423). 51

“William Jones, der durch die aufgezeigte Verwandtschaft und Abstammung des Römischen, Griechischen, Deutschen und Persischen aus dem Indischen zuerst Licht in die Sprachkunde, und dadurch in die älteste Völkergeschichte gebracht hat . . .” (ÜSWI, 85). 52

See ÜSWI, 6–8, 10–11, 18–26, 28–29, 32–34, 61, 74, 76–77, 84–85.

53

See ÜSWI, 7, 11, 22, 29, 33–34, 56, 79. “French” is mentioned only three times in the whole text. 54

Oesterle, “Friedrich Schlegel in Paris,” 10.

55

See Anil Bhatti, “August Wilhelm Schlegels Indienexperiment: Kulturtransfer und Wissenschaft,” in Der Europäer August Wilhelm Schlegel: Romantischer Kulturtransfer—Romantische Wissenswelten, ed. York-Gothart Mix and Jochen Strobel (Berlin: DeGruyter, 2010), 253. 56

Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). 57

Pollock, “Deep Orientalism?”

58

Jürgen Lütt, “‘Heile Welt’ oder Rückständigkeit? Deutschland, Indien und das deutsche Indienbild: Das romantische und das utilitaristische Indienbild Europas,” Der Bürger im Staat 48, no. 1 (1998): 60. 59

However, Schlegel seems to have been aware of the practice of “sati” (Naumann, Friedrich Schlegel: Lucinde, 16). Here also a differentiation is called for between Friedrich and his brother August-Wilhelm Schlegel, whose engagement with India was more sustained and less guided by the historical circumstances around 1800 (see Bhatti, “August Wilhelm Schlegels Indienexperiment” and “Deutsche Indiendiskurs”). 60

Inden, Imagining India, 69.

61

Avant la lettre, Marx developed the concept of the “Asiatic mode of production” in a number of essays on India in the 1850s. The first explicit mention of the term occurs in Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (Berlin: Duncker, 1859), vol. 13 of Marx and Engels, Werke (MEW). In Orientalism, Said (154) quotes the following passage from “The Future Results of the British Rule in India,” published in The New-York Daily Tribune, 8 August 1853, 36: “England has to fulfill a double mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating—the

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annihilation of Asiatic society and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia.” A critical discussion of Said’s rendering of Marx can be found in Dirk Uffelmann,“‘Orientalischer’ Anarchismus: Marx und Engels über ‘asiatische Produktionsweise,’ Zarismus und ‘Bakunisterei,’” in Was bleibt? Karl Marx heute, ed. Beatrix Bouvier et al. (Trier: FES, 2009), 201–32. 62

Jennifer Jenkins, “German Orientalism, Introduction,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 24, no. 2 (2004): 97.

63

See Benes, “Comparative Linguistics as Ethnology”; Susan R. Boettcher, “German Orientalism in the Age of Confessional Consolidation: Jacob Andreae’s Thirteen Sermons of the Turk, 1568,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 2 (2004): 101–15; Gottfried Hagen, “German Heralds of Holy War: Orientalists and Applied Oriental Studies,” ibid., 145–62. 64

Boettcher, “German Orientalism,” 102.

65

Tuska Benes points to the fact that even “the invention of historical grammar—which was the most dramatic achievement of early German language scholars [like the Grimm brothers]—responded . . . to precedents within comparative philology. German language study tailored itself more closely to the methods and concerns of Orientalists than to the techniques of classical scholars.” Benes, In Babel’s Shadow: Language: Philology and the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Germany (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2008), 118–19. 66 Pollock, “Deep Orientalism?; Robert B. Cowan, “Fear of Infinity: Friedrich Schlegel’s Indictment of Indian Philosophy in ‘Über die Sprache und die Weisheit der Indier,’” German Quarterly 81, no. 3 (2008): 334; Nicholas A. Germana, “Self-Othering in German Orientalism: The Case of Friedrich Schlegel.” The Comparatist 34, no. 3 (2010): 81. 67

Germana, “Self-Othering in German Orientalism,” 81, 83.

68

Ibid., 90.

69

Tzoref-Ashkenazi, “Nationalist Aspect,” 120–21.

70

This is not the place to go into the uses of alternative antiquities like philhellenism, which served a similar purpose of uplifting the German self. For the controversy between Hellenophiles (Goethe, Benary) and Indophiles (Schlegel, Hegel) from around 1800 onward, see Andrew Sartori, “Beyond Culture-Contact and Colonial Discourse: ‘Germanism’ in Colonial Bengal,” Modern Intellectual History 4, no. 1 (2007): 77–93. I am also leaving aside the romantics’ medievalism, to which Schlegel turned after abandoning his Sanskrit studies. 71

Tzoref-Ashkenazi, “India and the Identity of Europe,” 718.

72

Ibid., 732.

73

Schlegel called it the language “of cultural influence” (des gesellschaftlichen Einflusses) (ÜSWI, 177). 74

For the role of notions of pride and honor in the history of nationalism, see Hirschi, Wettkampf der Nationen, and Origins of Nationalism. 75

Kohn, “Romanticism and the Rise of German Nationalism,” 445.

76

Rüdiger Safranski, Romantik: Eine deutsche Affäre (Munich: Hanser, 2007), 174.

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77

Bryant, Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture; and Edwin F. Bryant and Laurie L. Patton, eds., The Indo-Aryan Controversy: Evidence and Inference in Indian Society (London: Routledge, 2005). 78

“So kann z.B. wohl nichts so viel Zweifel erregen, als wie eine Völkerschaft aus dem fruchtbarsten und gesegnetsten Erdstriche Asiens bis in den äussersten skandinavischen Norden hinauf habe wandern mögen. . . . In der indischen Mythologie findet sich etwas, was diese Richtung nach Norden vollkommen erklären kann; es ist die Sage von dem wunderbaren Berg Meru, wo Kuvero, der Gott des Reichthums, thront . . . Gesetzt also, nicht bloß der äussere Drang der Noth, sondern irgend ein wunderbarer Begriff von der hohen Würde und Herrlichkeit des Nordens, wie wir ihn in den indischen Sagen überall verbreitet finden, habe sie nordwärts geführt, so würde sich der Weg der Germanischen Stämme von Turkhind längst dem Gihon bis zur Nordseite des caspischen Meers und des Kaukasus leicht nachweisen lassen” (ÜSWI, 193–94). 79

Carsten Wieland, Nation State by Accident: The Politicisation of Ethnic Groups and the Ethnicization of Politics: Bosnia, India, Pakistan (New Delhi: Manohar, 2006); Tobias Delfs, Hindu-Nationalismus und europäischer Faschismus: Vergleich, Transfer- und Beziehungsgeschichte (Hamburg: EB-Verlag, 2008). 80

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3: Germany’s Local Orientalisms Todd Kontje

I

N FOR SPACE, Doreen Massey challenges what she terms “an essentialist, billiard-ball view of place” that imagines cross-cultural contact as a series of collisions between self-contained units that may ricochet in unpredictable angles across the surface of the global pool table, but which never change their basic identities as solids or stripes, cue ball or eight ball. Instead, Massey argues that we should understand “place as the sphere of the possibility of the existence of multiplicity in the sense of contemporaneous plurality; as the sphere in which distinct trajectories coexist; as the sphere therefore of coexisting heterogeneity.”1 In her understanding of space as a social construct Massey builds on the work of Henri Lefebvre, her stress on the heterogeneity of particular societies echoes Michel Foucault’s concept of the heterotopia, and her vision of a world conceived in hybridity and engaged in an ongoing process of global exchange is shared by others too numerous to list.2 In this view, the billiard balls are porous, not solid; when they meet, they mesh and change color and change color again, mixing and matching in unpredictable and never-ceasing ways. Such theories not only challenge the essentialism of ethnic nationalism, but also compel us to rethink our understanding of orientalism. If cultures, societies, and nations are not “imagined as having an integral relation to bounded spaces, internally coherent and differentiated from each other by separation,” as Massey puts it,3 then it is also no longer adequate to conceive of the Occident and Orient as geographically fixed and ideologically rigid. This chapter explores how our changing understanding of socially produced space complicates notions of national identity and restructures our understanding of German orientalism. As a matter of clarification, this chapter begins with a brief distinction between orientalism as an academic discipline, a Western ideology, and a literary motif. It then follows a trail that leads in reverse chronological order from the films of Fatih Akin through the work of Franz Kafka and Thomas Mann to Johann Wolfgang Goethe. I follow this admittedly unconventional path from the present to the past because so often the novelty of a given age is defined in terms of its deviance from the allegedly simpler times of a bygone era. As we shall see, however, the journey back in time does not

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lead to the center of Germany’s national culture. Instead, we find that the multiplicities and fluidities of the global present recur in historically and biographically specific ways in the writers of the past. In each case we find tensions between the local and the national on the one hand, and between the national and the global on the other, that together have produced not a single, national variant of European orientalism, but rather the ongoing multiplicity of Germany’s local orientalisms.

I. Defining Orientalism Much of the controversy surrounding the term orientalism results from the fact that it is used in at least three overlapping yet ultimately distinct ways. First, orientalism refers to an academic discipline devoted to the study of the languages, religions, and cultures of regions stretching from the Eastern Mediterranean to India, or, more broadly, from the Near to the Far East. Second, orientalism is defined as an ideology, a set of prejudices that bolster a sense of European superiority over the East and thus implicitly or explicitly legitimate imperialism and colonialism, the exploitation of subjugated peoples deemed culturally and racially inferior to the dominant culture. Third, orientalism is a recurring theme in literature and the visual arts. Distinctions between the first two definitions of the term are admittedly fluid. Scholarship is not always objective or value-neutral; an orientalist in the first sense of the term may share some of the prejudices implied by the second. The categories nevertheless differ in a number of important ways. As Suzanne L. Marchand argues in her magisterial study German Orientalism in the Age of Empire, not all scholarship is ideologically tainted, nor is knowledge inevitably motivated by a desire to dominate and exploit.4 In fact, it would be meaningless to point out the ideological abuse of some scholarship if all scholarship were nothing but ideology. Conversely, the existence of some or even many orientalist scholars whose work is above reproach does not preclude the existence of orientalist prejudices among the multitudes in a given society who will never learn to read ancient Assyrian or ponder the intricacies of Egyptian mythology. Dating the history of orientalism also varies substantially depending on one’s definition of the term. While scholarly orientalism is generally considered to have begun in the late eighteenth century with the deciphering of ancient Sanskrit and Egyptian hieroglyphics, orientalism as an ideology is as old as the medieval Crusades and as recent as the current anti-immigration movement in Europe. Those who harbor orientalist prejudices may also project them onto broader and more nebulously defined regions than scholars who focus closely on particular languages and cultural traditions of the Middle East. For this reason, Edward Said was able to expand his original focus

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in Orientalism on European encounters with the East to “a more general pattern of relationships between the modern metropolitan West and its overseas territories” in Culture and Imperialism without fundamentally altering his conception of orientalism as a form of power/ knowledge in Foucault’s sense of the term.5 In a similar vein, Susanne Zantop argued that the “‘discovery,’ in 1492, of a whole new continent to the west of Europe and Africa . . . expanded any simple self-other, Occident-Orient dichotomies, to include not just many others, but multiple, multivalent, constantly shifting ‘occidents.’”6 Thus orientalism in the sense of a scholarly discipline is more limited in terms of its individual practitioners, its institutional history, and its geographical range than is the case with orientalism as a Western ideology. Literary orientalism, in turn, may be informed by scholarly studies and reflect popular prejudice, and yet there is a difference between art and scholarship, ideology and the imagination. Scholarship dwells in the realm of facts; literature lives in the realm of the hypothetical, of fiction. Literature can reinforce negative stereotypes, but it can also expose the arrogance of orientalist assumptions, introducing ambivalence and doubt into triumphalist rhetoric.

II. German Orientalism In recent decades critics have sought to add further nuance to the understanding of orientalism by focusing on distinct national traditions. As Russell A. Berman notes in Enlightenment or Empire, relations between European nations and their non-European colonies were intimately linked to intra-European rivalries.7 The place of Germany in the history of European orientalism has proven particularly intriguing, for, as Said notes, it poses the seemingly anomalous combination of a nation with a highly developed academic discipline of orientalism and an absence of actual colonies.8 If it is true, as Said maintains, that orientalism is the ideology that arose in tandem with European imperialism and colonialism, how could nineteenth-century Germany become the leader in the field of academic orientalism, given that its actual engagement in overseas empire came late, ended early, and paled in comparison with nations such as England or France? Suzanne L. Marchand responds that the question itself is based on the false assumption that scholarship is necessarily and inevitably the handmaiden of ideology. In her view, German orientalists were primarily interested in biblical exegesis, not colonial conquest.9 Yet Marchand focuses exclusively on academic orientalism. If we expand the focus to a broader political, cultural, and historical context, we find that Germans were involved in European imperialism in multiple ways. Granted, Germany did not begin an active policy of overseas colonial expansion until 1884 and lost all of its colonies in 1918, but for more

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than three decades Germany did have colonies in Africa, China, and the Pacific.10 And as Zantop shows, Germans had precolonial fantasies long before they possessed actual colonies, just as they shared prejudices about non-European peoples with other, more precocious colonial powers.11 Moreover, if we think in terms of intra-European colonization rather than overseas conquest, we find that the Germans were active players from an early age. As the British invaded Ireland and the Spanish reconquered the Iberian peninsula, Teutonic Knights pressed into parts of eastern Europe that were systematically colonized by German settlers, beginning a quest for Lebensraum and its attendant denigration of Slavic peoples that would continue into the twentieth century.12 Still closer to home were Germany’s Jews, local “orientals” subject to long-standing prejudice that erupted into genocidal violence under National Socialist rule. The various studies of German orientalism that have proliferated in recent years—including my own13—have tended to downplay the significance of an obvious fact: with the exception of the relatively brief periods of 1871 to 1945, and again from October 3, 1990 to the present, Germany did not exist, at least not in the sense of a single political entity. On a map of German-speaking territories in 1648, for instance, we find the imperial cities of Frankfurt and Nuremberg, the Archbishopric of Bremen, the Duchy of Brunswick-Lüneburg, the Electorate of Saxony, the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel, and the Margraviate of Bayreuth, but we do not find Germany.14 Even after the first German unification in 1871, considerable cultural labor had to be invested to transform regional loyalties into German nationalism.15 Still today the German Länder retain considerable autonomy in relation to the federal government as a reaction against the enforced Gleichschaltung of the Nazi rule and the homogenization of regional differences within the German Democratic Republic.16

III. Beyond the Nation-State? Fatih Akin’s Gegen die Wand The peculiarities of Germany’s recent history must be viewed in the context of larger geopolitical developments. Even as the divided nation rushed toward political reunification in the months after the opening of the Berlin Wall, other trends were undermining or at least complicating national sovereignty within Europe and around the globe. The Schengen Agreement opened borders between member nations of the European Union, many of which soon adopted the euro as their common currency. Meanwhile, such diverse phenomena as the rise of religious fundamentalism, accelerating climate change, and increasingly interconnected financial markets share a common disregard for neatly drawn national boundaries. Thus Arjun Appadurai proclaims in a much-cited study that

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“the nation-state, as a complex modern political form, is on its last legs,” while noting that mass migration and mass media are “producing locality in new, globalized ways.”17 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri distinguish between the nineteenth-century imperialism that emanated from competing nation-states and a new form of sovereignty that they term “Empire,” which is “decentered and deterritorializing” and “incorporates the entire global realm.”18 As global flows produce transnational alliances and hybrid identities it becomes complicated to speak of discrete national cultures and equally difficult to identify an oriental other. Fatih Akin’s award-winning film, Gegen die Wand (2004), for instance, features protagonists of Turkish origin living in Hamburg, and yet to describe the film as portraying a “clash of civilizations” between Germans and Turks would vastly oversimplify its depiction of individual identities and national geographies. Sibel (Sibel Kekilli), the female lead, holds a German passport but is so oppressed by her fundamentalist Islamic family that she is driven to attempt suicide. In a desperate effort to gain forbidden freedom she proposes to the equally suicidal Cahit (Birol Ünel), a man of Turkish origin still grieving over the recent loss of his German wife. Ironically, Sibel’s parents are willing to accept her marriage to Cahit because they consider him Turkish, even though he also has a German passport and is anything but a devout Muslim. Meanwhile Sibel’s cousin Selma (Meltem Cumbul) is pursuing a career in hotel management in Istanbul. She watches BBC news to improve her English while she trains in her spare time for competitive weight lifting as Sibel’s parents watch Turkish television via satellite behind drawn curtains in their Hamburg apartment. Who is the real Turk and where is the real Orient? The hard-drinking, foul-mouthed man born in Turkey with German citizenship who can barely speak his native tongue? The cosmopolitan woman living in Istanbul who speaks good English and drinks red wine? Sibel’s monolingual parents ensconced in the virtual Turkish reality of their Hamburg apartment? One might argue that the kinds of questions raised by Akin’s film are unique to our contemporary world, and in a sense they are: in Gegen die Wand and other films such as Im Juli (2000), Auf der anderen Seite (2007), and Soul Kitchen (2009), Akin focuses on border crossings and arrivals and departures at international airports to highlight the unprecedented mobility of the modern world, while the on-screen presence of televisions, cell phones, and laptop computers remind us of the new media that forge instant ties between individuals and communities in previously unimaginable ways. Characters who switch effortlessly from Turkish to German also speak English with varying degrees of fluency, thus further undermining the binary opposition between Turkish and German culture. Yet while the speed of travel and communication may have accelerated in recent decades, neither phenomenon

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is in itself new. Human beings have been on the move since the first hominids descended from the trees and walked out of Africa, no doubt chattering in some form of language as they went and intermingling with other groups along the way. Thus those nineteenth-century intellectuals who sought the untrammeled tribal origins of their national cultures in the somewhat later Völkerwanderungen were laboring under an illusion, as Patrick J. Geary has argued: “Europe’s peoples have always been far more fluid, complex, and dynamic than the imaginings of modern nationalists.”19 By the same token, theorists of today’s process of globalization tend to exaggerate the novelty of the present. As Scott Spector points out in his study of Kafka’s Prague, Appadurai imagines “a past where populations were or seemed to be nonplural, where identities were or seemed to be stable, where centers were centers and peripheries were peripheries. But as we have already seen in our review of turn-of-the-century Prague and Bohemia, such is not the case.”20

IV. Kafka’s Prague Spector and others have done much to transform our understanding of Kafka as the disembodied and deterritorialized voice of existential angst to the product of a specific place and time.21 As Mark Anderson puts it, Kafka’s famous “negativity had a precise historical content. . . . Negativity does not mean nothing; it exists in relation to something.”22 That something was above all the city of Prague. “Kafka was ‘local’ like Yeats,” writes Klaus Wagenbach, and he cites an anecdote by Kafka’s Hebrew teacher Friedrich Thieberger that drives home his point. “One day we were looking out of the windows onto the Ringplatz. Kafka said to me: ‘Here was my Gymnasium, over there, facing us, my university, and just a bit further to the left, my office. This small space,’ he said, drawing a few small circles with his finger, ‘encloses my entire life.’”23 Kafka’s place in Prague was defined in relation to three different political and cultural contexts: the Austro-Hungarian Empire, German literature, and Western European Judaism. Although Kafka was raised by parents whose “residual Judaism had been drained of its religious content,” he later became interested in exploring his Jewish heritage.24 Kafka maintained a certain critical distance toward the Zionism that Max Brod so ardently embraced, but he eventually learned Hebrew, explored Jewish mysticism, and even toyed with the idea of emigrating to Palestine. Kafka was also a subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire until the end of the First World War, when he became a citizen of the Czech Republic. Unlike many of his monolingual colleagues, Kafka spoke fluent Czech and was thus able to keep his old job in the new regime: “Scheinbar bruchlos tritt Kafka damit in die Ordnung des neuen Staates ein, der ihm so fremd bleiben wird wie das versunkene

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Kaiserreich.”25 If Kafka did not grieve for the former empire, it was at least in part because it was a multilingual and multiethnic confederation that did not inspire the fierce loyalty of a modern nation-state. As Claudio Magris argues, the Habsburg myth was based on the idea of loyalty to the monarchy conceived in direct opposition to “das moderne Erwachen der nationalen Kräfte.”26 Just such an awakening of Czech nationalism was taking place in nineteenth-century Prague, however, threatening the German-speaking minority to which Kafka belonged. This group claimed membership in a transnational community of allegedly superior German culture that extended across political boundaries from Berlin to Vienna.27 Thus Kafka received a thorough grounding in the history of German literature in school and in later years admired Goethe, Kleist, and Thomas Mann as much as he loved Grillparzer, Stifter, and Hofmannsthal, or, for that matter, Flaubert and Dickens.28 To argue, therefore, about whether Kafka should be considered an Austrian or a German author is to overlook his liminal position between both realms and to oversimplify the alleged unity of either national literature. As Spector states, “it is in the uniquely charged spaces between identities—social identities, but also national, spiritual, and political identities—that the creative moment of the Prague circle takes place.”29 Prague’s location in Central Europe gave Kafka and his contemporaries a unique perspective on the ideology of European orientalism. Edward Said defined orientalism in terms of relations between European powers and their non-European colonies. As noted, however, Germany had only a few overseas colonies for a short period of time, while Austria had none. Yet the Austro-Hungarian Empire extended into eastern Europe and was repeatedly threatened during the early modern period by the Ottoman Empire, just as Prussia had a long history of colonizing parts of today’s Poland. In both cases orientalist prejudices were projected onto adjacent territories rather than distant colonies.30 Given the lack of clear geographical boundaries, the line between Germanic culture and orientalized eastern Europeans was fluid and porous in a way that was not the case for other imperial powers. The presence of a significant number of Jews in Berlin, Prague, and Vienna further complicated matters. In the increasingly anti-Semitic climate of early twentieth-century Europe, Jews were often branded as a foreign, “oriental” presence in Western society. Jews aspiring to assimilate to the Christian mainstream often internalized these prejudices and sought to distance themselves from the “real” orientals, eastern European Jews who dressed and spoke in ways that distinguished them from their Western European counterparts.31 Martin Buber reversed the stereotype, seeing in the eastern European Jews a repository of uncorrupted authenticity that could serve as the antidote to the decadence of Western European Jewry. Meanwhile, Theodor Herzl and his fellow Zionists sought to establish a new homeland for the Jews in

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Palestine. As Laurel Plapp observes, “Zionism . . . was simultaneously an emancipationist movement in response to antisemitism and a colonizing venture in the Middle East.” Conceived in the effort “to free Jews of antisemitism,” the Zionist movement “at the same time drew on orientalist understandings of the world and Western Europeans’ place in it.”32 For instance, Theodor Herzl justified calls for a Jewish homeland in Palestine with the claim “that the Jewish nation would provide Europe with ‘a part of the barrier against Asia’ and ‘would serve as the outpost of civilization against barbarism.’”33 In the spring of 1917, when his interest in Zionism was on the rise and the war was tearing the Austro-Hungarian Empire apart, Kafka wrote two stories with stereotypically “oriental” settings that reflect indirectly on questions of community building and nation formation: Schakale und Araber and Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer. The former features a traveler from the distant North to a desert oasis, where he has a late-night conversation with an old jackal. The jackal complains bitterly about Arabs who fail to maintain proper hygienic standards and begs the traveler to kill them once and for all. When the Arabs drag out the body of a dead camel, however, the jackals forget everything but their animal appetites and begin ripping hunks of bloody, stinking flesh from the rotting carcass. Seen from a biographical perspective, Schakale und Araber provides evidence of Kafka’s boundless self-loathing: the man who avoided alcohol and meat in the quest for personal purity portrays himself as a hypocritical parasite overcome by uncontrollable greed.34 In a similarly self-deprecating vein, the meat-eating barbarians who overrun a Chinese village in Ein altes Blatt speak in a language that sounds like jabbering jackdaws, a transparent reference to the meaning of Kafka’s name in Czech.35 Schakale und Araber also offers a critical commentary on Zionist plans to establish a new homeland outside Europe. Kafka inverts Zionist prejudice against Arabs into Jewish self-hatred; a colonial fantasy of bringing civilization to the wilderness turns into an indictment of European imperialism. In Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer Kafka shifts the setting from the Middle East to distant China, but the exotic locale serves primarily as a vehicle for discussing issues closer to home.36 We learn little or nothing about China that we did not already know: that there is an emperor and a wall, that the civilization is very old and the country very large. Like the sword-wielding Statue of Liberty in Der Verschollene, however, Kafka’s Great Wall of China has been modified in a significant way, for instead of extending continuously across the northern border it has been constructed in bits and pieces. It is therefore quite possible that it has significant gaps, according to the narrator, and in any case the enemies to the north are so far from the narrator’s location in southeastern China that they pose no significant threat. Why, then, build the wall at all? Perhaps it is the process rather than the completed product that matters, the narrator

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speculates. Working together on limited segments of the wall creates a sense of collective purpose among the builders: “Einheit! Einheit! Brust an Brust, ein Reigen des Volkes, Blut, nicht mehr eingesperrt im kärglichen Kreislauf des Körpers, sondern süß rollend und doch wiederkehrend durch das unendliche China.”37 Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer can be read as a critical reflection on both Zionist responses to the Jewish diaspora and the rise of ethnic nationalism that hastened the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kafka’s description of the collaboration of two great armies, “des Ostund des Westheeres,”38 on the construction of the Great Wall of China seems to provide a reconciliatory vision of cooperation between Eastern and Western Jewry and thus a plan for the collective revitalization of the Jewish people.39 That the means toward this cultural revival lie in work on a fundamentally flawed and ultimately pointless project once against suggests critical distance from Zionist aspirations, however, while the fact that the narrator speaks in glowing terms about the unity of the Volk and its blood seems sadly ironic in retrospect, given the link between völkisch nationalism and anti-Semitic violence. Of course Kafka was not a prophet and could not have known of the impending disaster that would claim the lives of his sisters and many friends, but he could see the destructive consequences of the ethnic nationalisms that were already rising around him. The language of collective revival that inspired the Zionist desire for a new Palestinian homeland could also be used to justify the persecution and eventual elimination of “oriental” Jews from the body politic of European culture. Kafka’s sense of rootedness in Prague should therefore not be confused with a sort of benign Lokalpatriotismus, a loyalty to the Heimat as an antidote to the turmoil of modern times. Kafka viewed Prague more as a kind of prison, where he was under the thumb of an overbearing father and shackled to a job that prevented him from devoting his full energies to writing. Whenever he could, Kafka sought to escape the city, either by traveling to various locations in Europe or by reading or writing about distant places that included, in addition to America, China, and the Middle East, a Francophone penal colony somewhere in the tropics and the Gold Coast of Africa, where an expedition captures animals for the Hagenbeck Zoo.40 Once he has been brought to Europe and learned to speak, the ape Rotpeter of Ein Bericht für eine Akademie no longer seeks the complete freedom he may have known as an animal in Africa, but only a way out, “einen Ausweg.”41 “‘Weg-von-hier,’ das ist mein Ziel,” echoes the exasperated narrator of the parable Der Aufbruch in response to his servant’s question about where he intends to go: “nur weg von hier, nur weg von hier. Immerfort weg von hier, nur so kann ich mein Ziel erreichen.”42 In the end, however, Kafka remained in Prague, where he is buried today. His use of oriental settings and motifs in his fiction

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illuminate the complexities of his position as a German-speaking Jewish writer on the outskirts of the crumbling Austro-Hungarian Empire.

V. Death in Venice: Local Hybridity and Global Flows Like many young men of his generation, Kafka was an ardent fan of Thomas Mann’s fiction, and Mann was an early and avid admirer of Kafka’s work. Still, the two writers could hardly have been more different: Kafka worked a day job and wrote in sporadic bursts of midnight inspiration; Mann never worked a day in his life, except when he sat down in coat and tie each morning to craft another page of measured prose. Mann prided himself on his ability to complete long works under the most difficult circumstances; Kafka rarely finished anything. Kafka seldom read in public; Mann entertained large audiences. Mann’s novels were featured by the Book of the Month club; Kafka requested that his manuscripts be burned. When the First World War broke out, Mann felt compelled to write a five-hundred-page political essay about why he was an unpolitical man; Kafka went swimming.43 Mann, a Protestant, believed that he represented the entire German nation; Kafka felt alienated even from his fellow Jews: “Was habe ich mit Juden gemeinsam? Ich habe kaum etwas mit mir gemeinsam und sollte mich ganz still, zufrieden damit, daß ich atmen kann, in einen Winkel stellen.”44 Thus one might argue that Kafka’s locally inflected orientalism is something of an anomaly, and expect that Mann’s use of orientalist motifs might be more reflective of national concerns. Yet Mann, no less than Kafka, was a local writer, one who insisted to the end of his life that his works could only have been written by a man from Lübeck.45 Buddenbrooks depicts the decline of a family from a Hanseatic city-state against the concurrent rise to power of the Prussian-dominated nationstate. In the Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, Mann describes himself as a provincial who had somehow “slept through” Germany’s rise to imperial power, while extending his earlier critique of Prussia to a vehement indictment of France’s “imperialism of civilization.”46 Mann contrasts what he views as a belligerently intolerant form of nationalism that seeks internal homogeny and world hegemony with a more inclusive sort of nationhood that could embrace local diversity and remain content within its borders, a view that would carry over to his relentless critique of Nazi Germany in subsequent decades.47 Mann insisted that the effort to found a racially “pure” Germany was fundamentally misguided; the nation’s proper goal lay in a spirit of cosmopolitan inclusiveness. Mann’s insistence on the importance of his local origins should not be confused with an antimodern celebration of the provincial against

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the corrupting influence of modernity. He insisted that his first novel owed more to the literature of European decadence than German Heimatliteratur.48 The successive generations of the Buddenbrook family tend toward physical and mental illness rather than health, but as they become increasingly incapable of the hard work required to keep the family firm afloat, they also discover their latent artistic sensibilities and find themselves drawn toward places “ganz unten auf der Landkarte,” as Tonio Kröger will put it.49 Kröger’s vague gesture toward the south captures the fluid geography of Mann’s orientalism, which is linked less to a particular place than to a wide range of locations defined by their opposition to Northern Germany. Christian Buddenbrook loses all traces of his Protestant work ethic during his extended sojourn in South America. He returns home dressed in a tropical suit, marries a former prostitute, and later dabbles in Chinese. Artistically gifted but physically or mentally debilitated characters in Mann’s early fiction are often drawn toward Italy and Northern Africa; Hans Castorp will be fascinated by Clavdia Chauchat’s Asiatic features that bear an uncanny resemblance to those of his boyhood friend, Pribislav Hippe, whose “blending of Germanic blood with Slavic-Wendish” earned him “the nickname of ‘the Kirghiz.’”50 Orientalism plays a central role in Der Tod in Venedig (1912) as well, the tale of a European genius felled by an outbreak of Asian cholera spawned on the banks of the Ganges. Gustav Aschenbach—or rather, Gustav von Aschenbach, as we are told in the novella’s opening sentence—has been ennobled for his contributions to the national culture, and he thinks wryly before his death that the work inspired by his illicit passion for young Tadzio will be required reading for the nation’s impressionable youth. Although Mann modeled Aschenbach’s physical features on those of the recently deceased Gustav Mahler, he also gave his protagonist unmistakable autobiographical traits: Aschenbach is said to have published several of the texts that Mann had been unable to complete in the years after his early success with Buddenbrooks, and Aschenbach’s public recognition as a major author reflects Mann’s own ambition to be Germany’s most representative writer. Like Mann, however, Aschenbach is the product of a local setting and mixed lineage that complicate his role as a typically German author. Aschenbach comes from Silesia, a linguistic border zone whose political fortunes have been in constant flux: Silesia was part of the Austrian Empire until it was forcibly annexed by Prussia under Frederick the Great (the subject of one of Aschenbach’s major works); although part of the German Empire at the time the novella takes place, it would fall to Poland after the Second World War. Aschenbach’s father was Prussian, but his mother was Bohemian-Czech, whose “rascheres, sinnlicheres Blut” has left its trace in “die Merkmale fremder Rasse in seinem Äußern.”51 Aschenbach also has enough “Polish

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memories”52 to pick out Tadzio’s name and to identify his country of origin. He lives in Munich, the artistic mecca of Germany’s counterculture, rather than in its political capital, Berlin.53 The oriental appears in two guises in Aschenbach’s Venice: as a deadly if temporarily inspiring disease from India and as a beautiful if sickly adolescent from Poland. Mann’s orientalism thus combines the global with the local: the incursion of Asian cholera into Europe triggers a personal conflict in the protagonist that has its roots in the Silesian border zone of his youth and the racial mixture of his blood. Aschenbach is torn between Prussian duty and Bohemian desire, national dignity and oriental decadence. Venice is both a threshold on the border of the Occident and Orient and a microcosmic representation and repetition of the protagonist’s conflicted nature and its geographical correlatives. The Italian city with its “oriental temple” and “Arabic window frames”54 recalls the description of Munich in the novella’s opening pages, in which Aschenbach’s respectable apartment in Prinz-Regentenstrasse is but a short walk away from the shady character beside the Byzantine chapel in the local cemetery, a physical juxtaposition of conflicting styles and mentalities that recall, in turn, Aschenbach’s origins in the Silesian city of “L.” (Liegnitz).55 In all three cases the cities serve less as centers of homogenous national cultures than as sites of regional heterogeneity and crossroads of transnational cultural and bacteriological flows. Aschenbach’s daydream journey to a land of fetid jungles and crouching tigers both anticipates his actual travel to the edge of the Orient and his spiritual voyage into the repressed psychic depths of his inner Bohemia.

VI. Goethe’s Provincial Cosmopolitanism Thus Fatih Akin, Franz Kafka, and Thomas Mann complicate narratives of national identity with images of local diversity that in turn give a distinct cast to their deployment of orientalist motifs. But if even Thomas Mann is “kein sehr richtiger Deutscher,” as he confessed in the Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen,56 perhaps we will find the representative German in Goethe, the writer that Mann sought to emulate and from whose domineering presence Kafka struggled to escape. “Hier, oder nirgends ist Amerika!” proclaims one of the characters in Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre,57 and in Goethe, if nowhere else, lies the center of the national literature and the source of its uniquely German orientalism. Goethe’s West-östlicher Divan begins with a flight: Nord und West und Süd zersplittern, Throne bersten, Reiche zittern, Flüchte du, im reinen Osten Patriarchenluft zu kosten58

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The poet flees the chaos of contemporary Europe to a timeless world of wine, women, and song that he hopes will rejuvenate his own creative powers. Goethe’s “Hegire” was written on December 24, 1814, as Napoleon languished on the island of Elbe and delegates gathered in Vienna to redraw the map of postrevolutionary Europe.59 His reference to Mohammed’s flight from Mecca to Medina in 622 CE to characterize his own imaginary voyage to the East recalls an earlier “hegira” of 1786, when Goethe slipped out of Carlsbad on a secret journey to Italy.60 At that time personal motivations predominated in Goethe’s desire to get away at all costs: away from his stultifying administrative duties in Weimar and his frustrating relationship with Charlotte von Stein, toward the southern sun of Italy and the site of classical antiquity where he would find sexual satisfaction and poetic rebirth. Here, too, he was sheltered from the storms of political upheaval, at least as he described it in the stylized confession of his second Römische Elegie: Die Liebste Fürchtet, römisch gesinnt, wütende Gallier nicht, Sie erkundigt sich nie nach neuer Märe, sie spähet Sorglich den Wünschen des Manns, dem sie sich eignete, nach61

In both poetic cycles, the one composed near the beginning of the revolutionary era, the other begun at its end, Goethe creates a poetic persona that flees current events into a timeless present: the former seeks the amorous adventure that will awaken the spirit of eternal Rome, the latter whispers words of love that knock on the gates of Paradise and request eternal life. Both the Römische Elegien and the West-östlicher Divan reflect Goethe’s instinctive aversion to revolutionary violence, but by 1814 Goethe is as much disturbed by the patriotic fervor of his fellow Germans as he was once upset by the furious French (“wütende Gallier”). Goethe’s poetic flight from political chaos is also a flight toward what he would later term Weltliteratur, an openness that stands in direct opposition to narrow-minded nationalism. As a result, Goethe’s orientalism has a distinctly different flavor than that of his romantic contemporaries. While Friedrich Schlegel, August Wilhelm Schlegel, and Adam Müller sought to underscore the spiritual ties between Germany and the East in an effort to strengthen a sense of national exclusivity, Goethe appropriates oriental motifs in the spirit of cosmopolitan inclusiveness.62 The revolutionary turmoil of the Napoleonic wars prompted Goethe to begin a period of sustained autobiographical reflection. When Weimar was plundered in October 1806, Goethe, deeply traumatized by these events, wrote to his publisher Cotta that he was worried that his precious manuscripts might be destroyed.63 In the course of the next two years Goethe compiled a new edition of his complete works (the first had appeared in 1790), a retrospective project that inspired him to write his

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autobiography. Volume one of Dichtung und Wahrheit appeared in the fall of 1811; the second volume appeared one year later, and the third in May, 1814, the same month in which Cotta sent him a copy of Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall’s translation of the Persian poet Hafis. Later that summer Goethe made what would turn out to be his last visit to his hometown of Frankfurt, a journey marked by his passionate interest in Marianne von Willemer and the earliest poems of the West-östlicher Divan. Thus the Divan marked both a new beginning for Goethe and a return to the site of his earliest youth, a process of repetition and reflection (wiederholte Spiegelungen) that Goethe made the focus of one of the first poems of the Divan, “Im Gegenwärtigen Vergangenes.” To see how Goethe’s earliest years shaped his subsequent attitude toward the German nation and gave a distinct coloring to his orientalism, let us follow him back to the city of his youth. When Goethe was born in 1749, Frankfurt was a self-governing imperial city or Reichsstadt, subordinate only to the nebulous authority of the Holy Roman Empire. As James J. Sheehan explains, the Holy Roman Empire was not “a nation or a state”; it “did not command total sovereignty,” but rather served “to order and balance fragmented institutions and multiple loyalties.”64 In a society structured in terms of vertical hierarchies rather than the lateral fraternal bonds that would be typical of the modern nation-state, Goethe stood near the top of the social pyramid. His father was something of an outsider among the city’s ruling elite, but he was well educated, well traveled, and rich. His eighteen-year-old mother was the oldest daughter of Johann Wolfgang Textor, Frankfurt’s Schultheiß, the city’s highestranking lawyer, chief administrator, and most highly paid civil servant, a position granted for life that also involved oversight of the city’s external relations or foreign affairs. In many ways young Goethe was a provincial, a product of his local environment. Aside from occasional visits to his grandfather’s gardens outside the city walls, Goethe spent his first sixteen years in narrow Gothic streets that had changed little since early modern times.65 The nostalgic fantasy of late medieval Nuremberg evoked fifty years later by Wackenroder and Tieck in Herzensergießungen was still a reality in the Frankfurt of Goethe’s youth.66 The fairy tales and Volksbücher that the romantics struggled to preserve were still printed and sold by peddlers in the city streets; the weathered skulls of criminals executed more than one hundred years ago still hung in public view. Goethe witnessed executions and a public book burning, while the gates of the Jewish ghetto were still firmly in place. When Goethe went off to college in Leipzig, or “little Paris,” a city of broad promenades and fine fashion, he was ridiculed for his old-fashioned wardrobe and uncouth dialect.67 Yet Goethe was hardly a country bumpkin. If his origins were firmly rooted in the local, his education was decidedly cosmopolitan.68 As a boy,

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Goethe absorbed ancient and modern languages with remarkable ease: Latin, some Greek, a little Hebrew; Italian, French, English, even a little Yiddish, which he used for comic effect in a multilingual novel, now lost. During the Seven Years War a French officer was quartered in Goethe’s house, giving him daily opportunities to speak the language; he would later get his law degree in Strasburg, a German city on the French border, where he regularly saw productions of the French neoclassical dramas that he had partially memorized as a boy. His reading was as extensive as it was eclectic, ranging from baroque compendia of world history to the myths of ancient Greece and Rome, from Luther’s Bible to The Vicar of Wakefield, from Moliere to Tasso. It was not until the early 1770s, when Goethe met Herder in Strassburg, that the national became an important category for this provincial cosmopolitan.69 Under Herder’s influence, Goethe developed a new appreciation for the beauty of the local Gothic cathedral, began to write secular love poetry reminiscent of the medieval Minnesang, and to think about the sixteenth-century Germanic heroes that would soon establish his early fame, including Götz von Berlichingen and Faust. From the beginning, however, Goethe’s appropriation of the national culture contained elements of nostalgia and irony. Goethe’s Götz, a robberknight subservient only to the emperor who fights for justice with his iron fist, served as the model for the nascent nationalism of the Sturm und Drang movement, yet Götz is also a remnant of an earlier age, the last action hero in a world of effete courtiers and petty bureaucrats. The future lies with the cowardly Weislingen, who gives up his knightly freedom to work for the territorial state, just as young Werther will spend a few miserable months as a secretary in the administration of a local aristocrat—and Goethe will spend decades as Duke Carl August’s loyal servant in Weimar. Goethe’s move from Frankfurt to Weimar was a move from one of the imperial cities that were on the decline and toward one of the territorial states whose power was on the rise within the fractured political landscape of the German-speaking region.70 In time, one of these territorial states—Prussia—would lead modern Germany to political unification, but Goethe’s decision to accept Carl August’s invitation to Weimar was not motivated by a desire to become a founding father of a centralized nation-state. On the contrary: he made a good impression during his first meeting with Duke Karl August by discussing his favorite political theorist, Justus Möser, who argues in Patriotische Phantasien that the “Zersplitterung, Anarchie and Ohnmacht” of the German Reich were actually beneficial for the development of its culture.71 Skepticism toward national unification that might be purchased at the cost of political revolution informs Goethe’s programmatic essay of 1795, Literarischer Sansculottismus. The essay appeared in Die Horen, Schiller’s ambitious literary journal that was designed to unite Germany’s most

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prominent artists in an intellectual realm far above the muddy battlefields of revolutionary Europe, which they were expressly forbidden to discuss. At first glance, Literary Sansculottism would seem to be a smug defense of Germany’s national literature by its most prominent author. In fact, however, Goethe spends a considerable portion of the essay explaining why Germany does not have a “classical national author.” A classical literature could only arise in a nation with a grand and continuous history, Goethe contends, at a time when the national character is noble and the national culture at a high level, allowing a gifted author to write a major work at the height of his powers. None of these conditions obtain: the German nation is geographically and politically fragmented, the upper classes have been too focused on foreign influences to permit the development of an indigenous tradition, the lower classes have no taste, and thus writers who might otherwise have the freedom to develop their talents are forced to eke out a living through hackwork. In a surprising twist, however, Goethe turns this lament about the adverse circumstances that confront German writers into praise of what they have nevertheless achieved against all odds. And if political revolution is the price that the Germans would have to pay in order to have a classical national literature of their own, then they would rather do without: “Wir wollen die Umwälzungen nicht wünschen, die in Deutschland klassische Werke vorbereiten könnten.”72 Thus it should come as no surprise that Goethe would embark on an imaginary hegira to the East when Germany faced postrevolutionary turmoil in 1814. Just as he rejected the revolutionary nationalism of the French in 1789, he now rejected the nationalist aspirations of his German compatriots. At that time he sought to revitalize German literature by reawakening the spirit of classical antiquity, a project that he would continue in the allegorical wedding of Faust and Helena in Faust II. The West-östlicher Divan extends the contact between German and non-German literature across continents, centuries, and languages to an imaginary encounter with ancient Persia. Unlike his contemporary romantic intellectuals, who sought the deep Indo-Germanic roots of Germany’s national culture, Goethe embarks on an eclectic appropriation of orientalist motifs that recalls the playful eroticism of his earliest anacreontic poetry. Goethe’s orientalism, in short, arises out of the same spirit of provincial cosmopolitanism that informed his earliest years in the imperial city of Frankfurt and that inspired the concept of Weltliteratur in his old age. As Goethe envisioned it, Germany had become the nexus of the global circulation of world literature; Weimar was its spiritual center and Goethe its emperor. Yet Goethe’s empire of world literature was not based on the concept of the modern nation-state, which strove to establish an efficiently centralized bureaucracy within and turned aggressively against its external neighbors. Instead, he envisioned a benevolent, looser organization of the sort that the Holy Roman Empire had been in his youth,

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tolerant of internal diversity and open to international exchange. His Faust, long considered the quintessential work of Germany’s national culture and the expression of its “Faustian” character is in fact a monumental example of world literature, an encyclopedic compendium of poetic forms and diverse literary influences.73 The pseudo-Persian poetry of the Divan, in turn, is not an anomalous curiosity in Goethe’s oeuvre but rather in keeping with the spirit of rooted cosmopolitanism that informs his work from beginning to end.

VII. Conclusion Gegen die Wand concludes with a shot of the protagonist Cahit sitting alone in a bus as it pulls out of the terminal in Istanbul on its way to his hometown of Mersin. In a sense, however, nothing has been concluded: Cahit has just celebrated a passionate reunion with Sibel, who had promised to join him on his journey, and yet she fails to appear at the bus station, presumably choosing to remain in Istanbul with her new partner and child. We are left with more questions than answers: Will Cahit rediscover his Turkish roots in the city of his birth? Or has his voyage from Turkey to Germany and back again so complicated his sense of personal identity that any attempt to return to the refuge of the Heimat will prove impossible? Gegen die Wand begins with Cahit’s full-throttle attempt to put an abrupt end to his life against an unyielding brick wall; it ends with his slow departure toward an uncertain future. Akin’s ambivalent image of open-ended closure, of a journey toward a home that has long since ceased to be a home, recalls Doreen Massey’s reflections on space cited at the beginning of this chapter. She rejects “an essentialist, billiard-ball view of place” in favor of a more fluid understanding of cultural geography marked by transnational flows and local diversity. Her work complicates notions of national identity and undermines ideological distinctions between us and them, here and there, the familiar and the foreign that are central to Edward Said’s definition of orientalism. One of the musicians interviewed in Crossing the Bridge, Akin’s documentary about the music scene in contemporary Istanbul, puts it more bluntly: “The idea that the East is the East and the West is the West and never the twain shall meet—that is bullshit. That is a historical lie that has been promulgated for centuries.”74 The image of Istanbul that emerges in this film is both of a capital city that brings together the many musical styles that together comprise the national culture and a crossroads of musical influences from around the globe. By the same token, Gegen die Wand is not only about cross-cultural encounters between two continents and two nations, but also about the contrast between two cities, Hamburg and Istanbul, and even, on a still more local level, between two neighborhoods within those cities, Altona and Beyoğlu.

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Similar complexities surrounding the sense of space obtain in the works of German-speaking writers of the past. A common pattern emerges in the authors and works examined in this chapter, as each is torn between a sense of entrapment and a yearning for escape: Goethe’s imaginary flight from the war-torn Europe of the Napoleonic era to the land of oriental poetry recalls his earlier journey from Weimar to Rome, from the sterility of modern Germany to the erotic fulfillment of a imagined antiquity. Gustav von Aschenbach flees from Munich to Venice, and tries to flee again from the infected city before surrendering to an obsession that inspires and destroys. Kafka’s protagonists seek a way out to anywhere but here from a city that will not release its grip: “Prag läßt nicht los.”75 Cahit escapes from a German psychiatric hospital in search of a forbidden beer and finds a wife who reconnects him in complicated ways to the Turkish culture of his past. In each case we find an oscillation between a sense of rootedness or entrapment in the local and a desire for physical or imaginary flight to somewhere liberating, exotic, or just different, that in turn mobilizes reflections on contrasting national cultures and traditions. Taken together, the works of these three writers and a film director suggest three conclusions that reinforce some of the arguments introduced at the beginning of this chapter. First, my focus on the local deployment of orientalist motifs neither exonerates nor absolves these artists of the sins of European orientalism per se. As noted above, literary orientalism can reinforce popular prejudices, but it can also work to undermine them, inspiring critical self-reflection and a more generous awareness of others. Goethe and Thomas Mann explicitly condemn imperialist nationalism, Kafka exposes the brutality of colonial practice, and Akin advocates tolerance over bigotry in films that call into question facile distinctions between East and West. At the same time, Goethe’s “Hegire” reduces the Orient to a string of hackneyed clichés that Mann simply inverts into their negative counterparts when he links Asia and eastern Europe to sexual deviance, disease, madness, and death. Even Akin could be accused of perpetuating orientalist prejudices when he casts his own brother as a vindictive zealot intent on murdering his sister to preserve the family’s honor in Gegen die Wand. Second, the location of orientalized places and peoples in literature and film is more fluid and wideranging than is the case for academic orientalism. Thus in addition to the usual suspects—Goethe’s Persia, Mann’s India, Kafka’s China, and Akin’s Istanbul—we find less obvious locations onto which orientalist imagery is projected, from Kafka’s Africa to Mann’s Poland to the Turkish television in Akin’s Hamburg apartment. Third, the site from which orientalism is deployed becomes as mobile and multilayered as the places onto which it is projected. Goethe becomes not simply a German author, but rather the product of an imperial city-state who made a career in a territorial state and maintained a skeptical distance from younger advocates of the

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modern nation-state. Kafka speculated about the advantages of “minor” literatures written in Yiddish or Czech, but he wrote in the language of Goethe and Thomas Mann. True, his place in Prague as a bilingual Jewish subject of the Austro-Hungarian Empire gave him a distinct perspective on the German-language literary tradition to which he contributed, just as Fatih Akin’s standpoint as a bilingual and bicultural Muslim in Hamburg adds a new dimension to German film. My larger point, however, is that we should not view such artists as anomalies, Sonderfälle or Einzelgänger that fall between the cracks of otherwise homogenous national cultures, but rather recognize that German culture has never been a unitary entity, and thus that the use of orientalist motifs in German-language literature and film is correspondingly complex. By delving into detail about the micropolitical tensions confronting locally situated artists we gain a more nuanced understanding of German orientalism and a more fluid sense of national identity in global context.

Notes 1

Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), 68, 9.

2

Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991); Michel Foucault, “Of Other Spaces” in Diacritics 16, no. 1 (1986): 22–27. A few of the most influential theorists of today’s global culture include Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996); Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994); and Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York London Tokyo, 2nd ed. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001).

3

Massey, For Space, 64.

4

Suzanne L. Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), xxv. Marchand directs her comments at the work of Edward W. Said, who acknowledged that the term orientalism commonly refers to an academic discipline, but stressed the ideological function of that discipline “as a Western style for dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Orient.” Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979), 2–3. 5

Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Knopf, 1993), xi.

6

Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997), 15. See also Lisa Lowe, who stresses the “heterogeneous and contradictory” character of French and British orientalisms: Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 5. 7

Russell A. Berman, Enlightenment or Empire: Colonial Discourse in German Culture (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1998), 100. 8

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Said, Orientalism, 19.

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Marchand, German Orientalism, xxiv, xxviii.

10

Sara Friedrichsmeyer, Sara Lennox, and Susanne Zantop, eds., The Imperialist Imagination: German Colonialism and Its Legacy (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1998); Gisela Graichen and Horst Gründer, Deutsche Kolonien: Traum und Trauma (Berlin: Ullstein, 2005); Alexander Honold and Klaus R. Scherpe, eds., Mit Deutschland um die Welt: Eine Kulturgeschichte des Fremden in der Kolonialzeit (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2004). 11

See also Nina Berman, German Literature on the Middle East: Discourses and Practices, 1000–1989 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011). 12

Robert Bartlett, The Making of Europe: Conquest, Colonization, and Cultural Change, 950–1350 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993). 13

Todd Kontje, German Orientalisms (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004).

14

Geoffrey Barraclough, ed., The Times Concise Atlas of World History, 3rd ed. (Maplewood, NJ: Hammond, 1991), 78–79. 15

Celia Applegate, A Nation of Provincials: The German Idea of Heimat (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990); Alon Confino, The Nation as a Local Metaphor: Württemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871–1918 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997); Elizabeth Boa and Rachel Palfreyman, Heimat: A German Dream: Regional Loyalties and National Identity in German Culture, 1890–1990; David Blackbourn and James Retallack, eds., Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe, 1860–1930 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007). 16

Stuart Parkes, Understanding Contemporary Germany (London: Routledge, 1997), xxiv. See also Mary Fulbrook, A History of Germany, 1918–2008: The Divided Nation (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009).

17

Appadurai, Modernity at Large, 19, 9.

18

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), xii. 19

Patrick J. Geary, The Myth of Nations: The Medieval Origins of Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002), 13. 20

Scott Spector, Prague Territories: National Conflict and Cultural Innovation in Franz Kafka’s Fin de Siècle (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 32. 21 See for instance Mark Anderson, ed., Reading Kafka: Prague, Politics, and the Fin de Siècle (New York: Schocken, 1989); and David Damrosch, “Kafka Comes Home,” in What Is World Literature? (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 187–205. 22

Mark Anderson, “Introduction,” in Anderson, Reading Kafka, 21.

23

Klaus Wagenbach, “Prague at the Turn of the Century,” in Anderson, Reading Kafka, 45. 26. 24

Ritchie Robertson, Kafka: Judaism, Politics, and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 6. 25

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Peter-André Alt, Der ewige Sohn: Eine Biographie (Munich: Beck, 2008), 474.

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26

Claudio Magris, Der habsburgische Mythos in der österreichischen Literatur (Salzburg: Otto Müller, 1966), 12. 27

Spector, Prague Territories, 12–13.

28

Robertson, Kafka, 7.

29

Spector, Prague Territories, 5.

30

On Austria’s unique place in the history of European orientalism, see Robert Lemon, Imperial Messages: Orientalism as Self-Critique in the Habsburg Fin de Siècle (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011), 1–14. On Germany’s relations with its “Nearest East” see Kontje, German Orientalisms, 177–224; and Kristin Kopp, Germany’s Wild East: Constructing Poland as Colonial Space (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2012). 31

Steven E. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers: The East European Jew in German and German Jewish Consciousness, 1800–1923 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982). 32 Laurel Plapp, Zionism and Revolution in European-Jewish Literature (London: Routledge, 2008), 14. 33

Ibid., 30.

34

Alt, Der ewige Sohn, 520.

35

Ibid., 31.

36

Rolf J. Goebel suggests that the story may also subvert the authority of Western orientalists who presume to speak for the “inscrutable” Chinese: Constructing China: Kafka’s Orientalist Discourse (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1997), 65–90. 37

Franz Kafka, Das erzählerische Werk, vol. 1, ed. Klaus Hermsdorf (Berlin: Rütten & Loenig, 1983), 476. 38

Ibid., 473.

39

Robertson, Kafka, 174.

40

On Kafka’s real and imaginary travels, see John Zilcosky, Kafka’s Travels: Exoticism, Colonialism, and the Traffic of Writing (New York: Palgrave, 2003). 41

Kafka, Erzählerische Werk, 234.

42

Ibid., 364.

43

Kafka’s diary entry of August 2, 1914 reads: “Deutschland hat Rußland den Krieg erklärt.—Nachmittag Schwimmschule.” Franz Kafka, Tagebücher 1910– 1923, ed. Max Brod (Frankfurt am Main: Fichser, 1983), 299. 44

Diary entry of January 8, 1914; Tagebücher, 250.

45

Thomas Mann, “Ansprache in Lübeck,” Gesammelte Werke, vol. 11 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1960), 534. 46 Thomas Mann, Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, ed. Hermann Kurzke, Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe 13.1 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2009), 152, 57. 47 Todd Kontje, Thomas Mann’s World: Empire, Race, and the Jewish Question (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2011), 124.

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48

Thomas Mann, “On Myself,” in Gesammelte Werke, vol. 13 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1960), 141. 49

Thomas Mann, Frühe Erzählungen, 1893–1912, Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe 2.1 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2004), 247. 50

Thomas Mann, Der Zauberberg, Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe 5.1 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2002), 184. 51

Mann, Frühe Erzählungen, 2.1:508.

52

Ibid., 539.

53

Russell A. Berman, The Rise of Modern German Novel: Crisis and Charisma (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 1–10. 54

Mann, Frühe Erzählungen, 2.1:565, 567.

55

Thomas Mann, Frühe Erzählungen, 1893–1912: Kommentar, Große kommentierte Frankfurter Ausgabe 2.2 (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 2004), 508. 56

Mann, Betrachtungen, 13.1:77.

57

Johann Wolfgang Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, Briefe, Tagebücher und Gespräche, ed. Friedmar Apel et al. (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985–), 9: 808. Italics in original.

58

Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, 3.1:12.

59

Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, 3.2:882–84.

60

Goethe referred to his clandestine departure for Italy as “meine Hegire von Carlsbad” (Sämtliche Werke, 3.2:883). 61

Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, 1: 397.

62

See Kontje, German Orientalisms, 90–93, 105–8.

63

Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, 14: 995. For an excellent account of Goethe’s response to these troubling events see Peter J. Schwartz, After Jena: Goethe’s “Elective Affinities” and the End of the Old Regime (Lewisburg: Bucknell University Press, 2010). 64

James J. Sheehan, German History, 1770–1866 (Oxford University Press, 1989), 14. 65

Richard Friedenthal, Goethe: Sein Leben und seine Zeit (Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag, 1968), 9. 66

Stephen Brockmann, Nuremberg: The Imaginary Capital (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2006). 67

Friedenthal, Goethe, 42.

68

Nicholas Boyle, Goethe: The Poet and the Age, vol 1, The Poetry of Desire (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991), 43.

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69

Boyle, Goethe, 115.

70

Ibid., 239–51.

71

Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, 14: 700.

72

Ibid., 321.

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73 Albrecht Schöne argues vigorously for an understanding of Faust as Weltliteratur in his critical commentary to Goethe’s drama. Goethe, Sämtliche Werke, 7.2:33–42. On the ideological abuse of Goethe’s Faust see Hans Schwerte, Faust und das Faustische: Ein Kapitel deutscher Ideologie (Stuttgart: Klett, 1962). 74

Crossing the Bridge: The Sound of Istanbul, dir. Fatih Akin (Strand Releasing, 2005).

75

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Kafka to Oskar Pollak, December 1902, cited in Alt, Franz Kafka, 103.

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4: Tales from the Oriental Borderlands: On the Making and Uses of Colonial Algiers in Germanophone Travel Writing from the Maghreb around 1840 James Hodkinson

I. German Speaking Travelers and the Maghreb around 1840

C

about the region of coastal North Africa known today as the Maghreb has, for the obvious reason of its long and complex colonial history, usually been a focus for scholars of French literature and history.1 The most recognizable literary text in German is Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué’s less-than-wellknown Karl V. Angriff auf Algiers, a historical-fictional account of the camaraderie of sixteenth-century German and Spanish soldiers in the service of Emperor Charles V during his military campaigns against Barbary corsairs, published in 1845. The advent of modern French colonial expansion into Algeria from 1836 involved the familiar patterns of military and political deployment. Also familiar, though, was the economic migration and religious missionary travel to the region by people from a range of non-French European backgrounds.2 The 1840s saw a renewed flowering of writing on the region in the German language, and there exists a wealth of largely neglected travel writing on the Maghreb produced during this period by German speakers of different backgrounds and affiliations.3 This chapter deals with two contrasting examples of such writing, produced by travelers from the German-speaking world who journeyed to French Algiers during the 1830s and 1840s. Both writers traveled to the region with a distinct mission that implied a differing outlook on it: one, Timotheus Dürr, was a German-speaking Alsatian pastor and the author of Vier Monate in Algerien: Bericht über meine Amtsführung in Dely-Ibrahim in einem Schreiben an die Pastoral-Conferenz zu Straßburg (1844), the other was Friedrich Fürst zu Schwarzenberg, an Austrian petty nobleman serving as a military conscript in the French army and author of Aus

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dem Wanderbuche eines verabschiedeten Lanzknechtes (1844–48).4 In addition to promoting awareness of this largely untapped corpus of travel writing, the discussion aims to shed light on two further things: first, it seeks to illuminate some of the key, often competing ideological currents that historically shaped how German-speaking travelers saw this part of the Orient and examines how both texts variously resisted or perpetuated those trends; second, the discussion outlines and traces the differing textual strategies used to represent non-European regions and cultures. The manner in which both of the travelers wrote about Algiers will almost inevitably have been colored by their views of and engagement with French colonial endeavor—and the attitudes of both writers to French colonialism will, in turn, have been affected by their own national origins, histories, and allegiances. Susanne Zantop’s groundbreaking study Colonial Fantasies showed how a range of literary and nonliterary writing in German from 1770 to 1870 in fact enacted the “fantasy” of a unified German nation and a colonialism that preceded the advent of real empire.5 Sensitive to “paracolonial” impulses of this kind, this chapter also remains alert to the specific traditions from which both writers emerged and the complex national, political, ideological, and confessional pressures under which they wrote. In the 1830s most of the territories that would (from 1871) make up the German Empire were still connected only through the loose network of economic affiliations of the German Confederation (of which Austria was also a part), and were still decades away from unification, let alone any realistic prospects of substantial overseas colonies. Dürr, though, is an interesting case, as he was at one remove from the German context, hailing not from one of Germany’s centers, but from the German-speaking, largely Protestant community within French Strasbourg. German-speaking Alsatians had suffered a degree of physical displacement and economic misfortune during the French Revolution, though by the 1830s the community within Strasbourg was again stable and prosperous, and the large (German) Protestant church enjoyed much freedom and state support under Louis-Philippe I, a religious and social liberal and the so-called citizen-king of the French.6 As Dürr’s mission to Algeria had been made possible “durch königliche Ordonnanz” (Dürr, iii)—by the patronage of the French King himself—it seems unlikely that Dürr would express any form of Germanic patriotism or indeed nationalism, especially if it might connect him in some way with critical attitudes toward French colonialism, or anti-French sentiment more generally.7 Yet, as an evangelical Lutheran, would Dürr enter into a different, spiritual conflict with the Roman Catholic Church, which was present in Algiers and historically more closely associated with France? And would he come to criticize

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(French) colonialism indirectly in confessional terms and, in so doing, begin competing for the new Algeria as spiritual territory? Schwarzenberg’s Austria was, in contrast to Germany, much more a nation in its own right. The version of Austria created in 1804 had remained a plurilingual, transnational entity, in which a German-speaking monarchy presided over territories including the kingdoms of Bohemia, Galicia, and Hungary. It bore the title of “empire” during this time and played a key role in the Napoleonic wars, while Klemens von Metternich, Austria’s leading foreign politician, loomed large in European politics from 1809 until the 1840s. Yet 1806 had marked the final dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire as Franz II relinquished the greater imperial crown. Vienna had already lost control of the Netherlands to the French Republic in 1795 and the Napoleonic wars saw the ceding of further territories to Bavaria and Napoleon’s empire, among others. By the 1830s Austria’s last “overseas” endeavor lay nearly half a century in the past— this had been an attempt to recolonize the Nicobar islands (an abandoned Danish colony) from 1778 and to establish an imperial presence in the Indian Ocean. The project folded by 1783 for financial reasons. Several decades would elapse before the constitution of the dual monarchy of Austria-Hungary would further extend Austrian borders and raise imperial prestige. So it might seem plausible for an apparently patriotic military nobleman such as Schwarzenberg to second himself to a French expedition in the 1830s, precisely because it provided him with the overseas experiences he lacked as an Austrian soldier. It is plausible, too, that his writing simply reflects and reinforces French colonial attitudes and perceptions of the colonized lands. Yet questions remain as to whether or not this traveler’s military and ideological alignment with French colonialism was in fact undercut by a form of Austrian nationalism and by a resulting sense of rivalry driven by the continued colonial expansion of a historical rival during something of a fallow period for Austrian imperialism. Both Schwarzenberg and Dürr wrote while in the service of French colonialism. It was French military power, French physical infrastructure, French politics, and French money that underwrote and made possible their presence in the region. Both travelers had ambivalent relationships toward French colonial power in its various forms: both depended on it, though might have felt driven to criticize or resent it for any number of reasons—not least because each saw himself, potentially, as a superior form of colonist to his French colleagues. This complex position might imply both critical and favorable attitudes toward French colonialism in the texts. Are, though, the representations of the peoples, places, and cultures of the Maghreb to be found in these texts similarly ambivalent? This chapter asks to what extent the modes and tropes of classic Saidian orientalism are to be found here and also whether the texts seek to create an oriental other that was inferior and in need of various forms of

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colonization, or whether either text represents the Maghreb differently. The discussion further asks whether or not any such deviation from conventional orientalist practices can be connected to the traveler’s ambivalence toward French colonialism. The two texts seek to “fix” colonial Algiers in language, both as an oriental space and a European colony. In considering which strategies are used to achieve this, the chapter revisits several theories outlined in this volume’s introduction. First, Said has already shown that, like colonialism in general, orientalist writing exposes the imaginary nature of geography—geography, in other words, is a discourse that configures and reconfigures physical and topographical space, both within language and on maps, to articulate a nation’s appropriation of and ostensible control over territory.8 Both of the travelogues attempt to reimagine the physical geography of what we today call Algeria.9 Second, our modes of reading travelogues have, however, also been affected by the “spatial turn” in cultural studies in other ways. Both travelogues seek not only to control and redistribute physical space qua representation, they also rethink human geography, circumscribing sociocultural spaces that can demarcate between (or internally divide) groups or communities according to differing parameters, be they ethnic, confessional, social, or gendered.10 Third, Andrea Polaschegg’s definition of the category of the “strange” (“das Fremde”), referring to that which is as yet unknown, as distinct from less sophisticated models of otherness that can only be thought of in such terms once they become the object of (in this case Western) knowledge, is also of importance here.11 This insight allows us to think about travel writing beyond the more limited taxonomies of oriental otherness used by Said. While acknowledging the reductive quality of much orientalist writing, the discussion will consider how the “known” Orient, as conceived and controlled by European power, relates to the strange and unknown Orient, “das Fremde,” which resides just beyond its physical and conceptual borders, inviting assimilation, though also questioning the scope of European knowledge and threatening its power and control. Fourth, the “ethnographic turn” in theories of travel writing has sensitized us to the complexities of how writers encounter and write about their informants: such written encounters are codetermined by factors like the gender, social status, and education of the observer and the normative cultural values to which (s)he might adhere.12 Of particular concern to our discussion will be how the differing missions undertaken by our two travelers, soldier and missionary, and the ideological affiliations they imply, colonial and evangelical-Christian, inform the way in which they represent their informants. Fifth, the texts of both writers became the objects of subsequent editorial interventions prior to and following publishing, which, for reasons historical, ideological, or economic, may be seen to have codetermined the author’s textual uses of the Orient in a

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variety of ways: the discussion will seek to highlight some of the ideological tensions that arguably arise within the texts as a result.

II. The Context for Colonial Writing: Algiers around 1830 The travelogues discussed center largely on a key location within the Maghreb: the city and environs of Algiers. Between the 1830s and the mid1840s, this destination presented travelers with a changing political and cultural context; the city of Algiers and its surrounding region had, since 1517, been one of the so-called Barbary states, a so-called deylik, within the Ottoman Empire. The ruling elite, presided over by the Dey, governed the diverse urban communities of Algiers in the name of the empire, including Arabs and arabized Berber Muslims, who lived alongside indigenous Jewish communities and tribal communities in outlying rural areas. Algiers had been an object of French designs for a number of decades: in 1827, following an assault on a French official by the Dey,13 the French began a three-year blockade of Algiers by naval vessels, which proved costly and ineffectual.14 A full expedition of French troops, including a number of non-French European conscripts, finally followed in May 1830. By 5 July, after sustained bombardment and ferocious skirmishing, the city fell and the Kasbah was sacked: superior French artillery had overcome the Dey’s superior numbers. Most of the remaining Turkish community was paid off and left or was deported, and French control was extended out to Oran to the west of the city and Bône to the east. However, in reality the French colonial grasp on the region was by no means secure. The so-called July Monarchy (1830–48) of King LouisPhilippe had decided to cut a dash both domestically and abroad and continue with the Algerian campaign. The initial aim of extending French rule to Bilda in the south had only served to galvanize resistance among the Muslim populace of Arabic and Berber tribes. Indecision and incoherence continued to beset early French colonial policy, which wavered between pursuing the full conquest and subjugation of all indigenous groups on the one hand, and partial conquest relying on alliances with ostensibly pro-French native groups on the other.15 Nevertheless, the city of Algiers itself was, in 1840, firmly in French hands. The original indigenous communities, with Ottoman numbers now depleted, were now sharing their city with French military and government personnel and their families, non-French European military conscripts, increasing numbers of diverse European merchants, and Christian settlers of all kinds, including both Protestant and Catholic clergy serving established congregations. Passing through and settling beyond the city proper were also missionaries posted to less established communities or engaged in proselytizing ventures.

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Both our chosen writers traveled to and wrote about a region laid claim to by Europeans and Christians. However, these travelers not only arrived in Algiers under different auspices—military and ecclesiastical— they also arrived at different times in the colony’s history. Schwarzenberg was part of the military expedition of 1830 that marked the colony’s inception, while Dürr followed over a decade later as part of the process of consolidating the region as a Christian colonial space. While both texts were produced in the context of colonialism, the way in which each delineates what that colony is, and how it is to be represented within writing also seems likely to be shaped by these historical contexts: Schwarzenberg’s writing will almost unavoidably depict colonialism at least in part as violent conquest, while Dürr’s text could well represent the phenomenon in different terms.

III. The Kingdom of God in Algeria: Timotheus Jakob Dürr’s Report Timotheus Jakob Dürr is a name largely forgotten, if indeed it ever figured largely in the minds of cultural commentators and historians. There is little written by or about him. The text’s introduction presents Dürr’s background only briefly: a German-speaking pastor, he had served in various parishes in the regions of Alsace and Lorraine before being posted in 1846 to minister to the Protestant community in Dely-Ibrahim, then an outpost some 5 kilometers southwest of Algiers city, and today a suburb of the same. The main body of the text is Dürr’s relatively short report, addressed to a conference of Lutheran pastors sitting in Strasbourg in 1844, the leading commission of which subsequently funded the publication, edited the text, and collectively wrote its introduction. The text is, then, Dürr’s work as mediated by these editors, their aims and attitudes. The introduction openly eulogizes the reputedly modest Dürr: the publication is addressed to a sympathetic, implicitly Protestant “geneigte[r] Leser,” who will, write the editors, doubtless be assured of the “Verdienst und der Pflichtestreue des bescheidenen Verfassers” (iv). The religious importance of the text, both for the evangelical community in Strasbourg and in Dely-Ibrahim, is made clear and given special emphasis in the introduction. However, the editors are quite open about having made some minor interventions in the text, transforming it from an epistolary report into a text with “Abschnitte,” each with a thematically inclined title for the reader’s ease. They retain some of the more protracted descriptions of scenes from French colonial life, describing topography and the developing infrastructure, and keep in place not inconsiderable lists of statistics (population counts, sums of money, distances, weights and measures) provided by Dürr. The editors write of

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their hope that the text will be bought and read widely, that the proceeds will help to promote the well-being of the Protestant community within the colony and also to facilitate the continuation of good missionary work. In fact the text fulfills several functions: as well as being commercially viable, it is ideologically acceptable to its French and Lutheran sponsors, serving as a living document of colonial progress, while also expressing a Protestant missionary message. Much has been written about the ambiguous role of missionaries within the colonization of Africa, and more recently on the Maghreb, showing missions to have been both promoters and critics of colonialism.16 Within this fraught context, it remains to be seen what mode of missionary work Dürr pursued, which attitudes he displayed to his religious calling, and, indeed, how these matters related to his writing on the colony, colonialism, and the wider Maghreb. Unsurprisingly, Dürr appears very much a Protestant man of God in this text, and this fact shapes the narrative in many ways. He is presented by his editors as a man who “mit Christhenmuth und Christentreue in jenen Gegenden für das Reich Gottes wirkt” (iv). The notion of the Kingdom of God is, first and foremost, a religious concept.17 However, the phrase also evokes more literal connotations of kingdoms as the works of men, be they religious or secular, especially when used in the context of nineteenth-century colonialism. Toward the end of the text proper, Dürr himself uses a telling formulation, writing: “Algeriens Wohl! ist mein Losungswort. Gebet, Geduld, Liebe, Beharrlichkeit, meine Waffen” (38–40). His motto is, he writes, “well-being for Algeria.” In striving for this, it is the Christian values of patience and love, coupled with a (perhaps idiosyncratically Germanic) notion of steadfastness and the power of prayer, that are to be employed. These qualities, though, he also refers to as his “weapons,” thus presenting himself as a soldier of sorts, albeit a crusading Christian soldier armed with faith. However, this militant virtue is later mitigated. In the six sections of the text dedicated to surveying and cataloguing the various Christian denominations, churches, and schools, Dürr appears more concerned with providing, spiritually and logistically, for his own congregation rather than expanding it. Particularly telling is a short entry in which he describes via a particular anecdote his attempts to pursue a “true” rather than a “false” form of Protestantism. He recounts how a Catholic colonist, who has a Protestant wife and children, approaches him to ask to take Holy Communion with him at a forthcoming Whitsuntide service. Dürr, however, politely refuses the man, “der sich lange mit der evangelischen Wahrheit beschäftigte” (36), and recommends instead that he continue to immerse himself in the Lutheran Bible, “damit er zur Überzeugung gelange, was das Beste für ihn sey, in dieser Angelegenheit” (ibid). This surprises the man, given that the Catholic Bishop of Algiers had recently performed an equivalent conversion and baptized as Catholics a number

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of Protestant military detainees, “unter grossem Pomp” (ibid). The incident demonstrates Dürr’s unwavering belief in the absolute theological authority of Protestantism and his view that true Protestantism expresses itself in the attempt to direct those who have strayed back to the path of truth: “irrende Brüder im Geiste der Liebe auf den Weg der Wahrheit und der Tugend zurückzuführen” (ibid). However, Dürr is no extrovert zealot, nor does he revel in triumphal public displays of conversion. He distances himself from any Protestant (or other) practice that seeks to demonstrate the strength of a faith by mere numbers of converts, only speaking to those Catholics, he insists, who are already seeking to convert (37), and is more concerned with enduring changes of belief within individuals. Armed with his metaphorical weapons, convinced of the Protestant cause, Dürr nevertheless wishes to appear to be working as one of God’s less overtly militant soldiers. Ultimately, though, this text’s religious outlook is inseparable from its wider colonial context. In 1842 a French ordinance survey had officially renamed the “la Berbérie” as Algeria. To follow the development of Algeria was to participate in the European reimagining of physical and human geography, along with the political, social, and logistical changes in the region that this process implied. The editors’ stated intention of informing the reader about “die Entwicklung Algeriens” (iv) places Dürr’s report clearly within a discourse on French colonization. The editors also include two maps, one of the northern Algerian coast stretching some 30 kilometers into the interior (49–51), entitled “‘Carte du Territoire d’Alger,” and one enlarged view of the bay of Algiers, the city of Algiers, and the limits of French control, clearly demarcated by the “Ligne de Défense” (ibid). The colony already bears the names of many French settlements, while the realm beyond that line is marked with Berber and Arabic place names. With these maps, the writer and his editors further embed the otherwise limited narrative and its religious commentary within the colonial context. The text interweaves personal anecdote and opinion with statistics, descriptions of places and landscapes, and records the author’s daily activities. This includes various accounts of the ongoing colonization process, detailing topography, climate, crops, and settlements, before focusing on the state of education and the Protestant community. The text’s explicit treatments of the politics and logistics of secular colonization, quietly selfsatisfied references to the conversion of Catholics aside, show no opposition to French colonial expansion—indeed there is no anti-French feeling of any sort and no trace of any kind of Germanic jingoism. On the contrary, early in the text he exclaims: “Die Kolonisierung des Landes macht wahre Riesenschritte” (8), citing the example of the local war minister’s approval of the building of a new colonial village for some fifty families (ibid). This transplantation of French infrastructure to the region is

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defined positively, as “giant leaps forward,” and the French government’s efforts in improving the country by employing clever and able men, allotting land and building on it, are presented as visionary: there is, in short, nothing but praise for colonial aspiration or activity. Dürr, then, is also writing a physical geography of the colony. He gives great attention to the ongoing attempts to cultivate the land in general, and to his own growing of crops and flowers in the gardens of his Pfarrhaus. As well as his detailed references to his growing of chrysanthemums, the pastor notes: “Man sinnt auf Verbesserung des Landes durch Dung und Cultur” (12), hoping that such cultivation might one day improve the climate of the region (17). Such entries, however banal, seem not to be concerned solely with matters botanical or with the simple need to feed the colonies—they also connect back to Dürr’s religious calling. Various qualities, virtues, and resources were essential if anything lasting was to come of the colonization: Durch Fleiß und Arbeitsamkeit, durch Beharrlichkeit in dem, was einmal als gut ist erkannt worden, und Ausdauer in der Ausführung des Unternommenen, durch Anwendung der Schlangenklugheit in Taubeneinfallt gehüllt, besonders aber durch umfassende Liebe und herzliches Erbarmen kann unter Gottes gnadenreichem und allmächtigem Segen in diesem Lande viel Gutes und Großes zu Stande kommen. Est arbour mirabilis in nuce (es ist ein wunderbarer Baum im Keim). Alles ganz und nur nichts halb! Dies muß das Motto eines Jeden seyn, der etwas bleibend Gutes hier vollenden will. (7)

All pervading love and compassion, imparted in the context of God’s grace and blessing, will make possible great achievements in this new country. However, qualities of strength and forcefulness will also be required—hard work, resolve, and stamina are among these. Indeed, the guile of a snake in the garb of a dove is called for—a phrase not necessarily implying deceit or disguise but clearly derived from the biblical verse Matthew 10:16, which calls for those spreading God’s word to be prepared for opposition they will doubtless encounter, though also to be ready to be gentle and merciful.18 Here the success of colonization stems from Christian belief and virtue. The new land is a seed or “germ” of something great that is yet to grow. So Dürr’s secular geography of colonial progress is, through shared language and metaphor, bound up in his vision of the region’s Christian future. The “fruit” yielded in Algeria is both a Christian missionary and a French colonial achievement; despite his subtle attempts to disassociate himself from the more overtly proselytizing tendencies of other Christian denominations (particularly French Catholicism), Dürr sees Christian values as

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providing the moral compass and driving force behind colonial expansion, and colonial expansion as an indispensible facilitator for spreading the word of God. This representation of the new Algeria is perhaps not unexpected, given Dürr’s mission, the predisposition of his editors and patron, his target audience, and the generic parameters implied by a report of this kind. Dürr is neither an overtly militant colonialist, nor is he a grand proselytizer, but he strives to extend the Kingdom of God on the foundations of the French colony nonetheless. More remarkable, though, is Dürr’s focus on new colonial settlements to the exclusion of almost everything else. By situating his accounts in these locations he demonstrates two strategies. First, he is writing about spaces, physical and cultural, which can most easily be represented as impervious extensions of Christian Europe on the African continent, a model described best by his own ideal of how colonial enterprises should be pursued: “Alles ganz und nur nichts halb.” These spaces contain largely colonial communities and little, if any, trace of indigenous cultures and peoples. The text, then, need not find ways of categorizing and controlling the cultural differences internal to itself and need not neutralize any challenge they might present to the Christian hegemony he seeks to construct. Second, where contact with Arabs, Berbers, and Muslims does occur, Dürr effectively presents these groups as marginal to his experience. Admittedly, his remit may not have been to convert Muslims but rather to minister to his own flock—quite how much time and contact Dürr had with noncolonial communities remains unclear. In any case the text excludes them and is notable for an absence of non-European informants that is atypical of Christian travel writing of the time. A brief mention of his appropriation of huts, now deserted by their Arabic builders (13), is one of the few traces of indigenous culture and offers a telling metaphor; if not an entirely “empty” space, it has been vacated to allow for new occupants. Neither the militarized frontier, acknowledged tacitly through the inclusion of the map, nor the regions that lie beyond it, are mentioned in anything but cursory fashion, despite the fact that Dürr’s mode of thinking, writing, and working with the Maghreb is entirely dependent on such lines of distinction and processes of exclusion. His narrative remains one that seeks to represent the region as a Christian (and French) colonial space that appears culturally uncontested and provides a tabula rasa for his vision.

IV. Conquest and Division: Nation, Colony and the Control of Cultural Difference in Schwarzenberg’s Wanderbuch The more literal weapons of colonial expansion were the tools of Friedrich Fürst zu Schwarzenberg. Born into a noble family in Bratislava/

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Pressburg, Schwarzenberg was given a military schooling from an early age, served on a range of military campaigns in the Austrian army, and was promoted quickly through its ranks.19 He joined the 1830 expedition to take Algiers as an adjunct to Marshall Bourmont’s forces. His military performance was exemplary and led to the award of the “Cross of the Legion of Honor.” He published a range of texts relating to his travels and military service, including Fragmente aus dem Tagebuch während einer Reise in die Levante (1837). He had already published a more sober account of his time in Algiers in the form of Rückblicke auf Algier und dessen Eroberung durch die Königlich-französischen Truppen im Jahre 1830 (1831), though it was in Aus dem Wanderbuch eines verabschiedeten Lanzknechts (5 vols.), first published between 1844 and 1848 and then republished retrospectively in an abridged form with illustrations in 1925, that he gives a more personalized, vivid, and extended account of his experiences in the region. The following discussion considers this later text, examining attitudes to the French conquest it depicts, but also the strategies it employs for defining the Algerian colony, both along its external borders and also through internal patterns of segregation. Significantly, Schwarzenberg was both witness to and participated in the initial conquest of Algiers and saw first-hand the military conflict, the changes in human geography, and the infrastructure involved in securing Algiers as a colony. He subsequently remained there as a soldier, playing his part in garrisoning the city for some time. The text recounts incidents and experiences from both of these periods. The account of his arrival in Algeria attaches particular significance to the act of setting foot on African soil: only in that moment does the author feel that he and his comrades were connected to the region and even “belonged” to it: Jetzt erst fühlten wir, daß wir dem Afrikanischen Boden angehörten. Wir waren in einer neuen, fremden Welt; die rege Spannung, in welcher ich den ganzen Tag gewesen, verließ mich, ein Fieberanfall trat unmittelbar . . . ein. (22)

This marks the beginning of a mode of writing that described the experience of physically inhabiting and eventually controlling a space, which becomes central to Schwarzenberg’s writing. This first connection with Algerian territory does not protect the author from initial experiences of alienation. He speaks of entering a “strange new world,” where the “strangeness” refers less to specific perceptions of cultural difference derived from knowledge and experience of the Maghreb, and more to the (in some ways threatening) experience of the Orient as a thing as yet unknown and beyond mastery. This sense of the “strange” is presented as a force so overwhelming that it seems to stake its claim on the author’s health as he falls victim to a fever—though this soon passes. Schwarzenberg is quickly integrated into the French military campaign,

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given lodgings and equipment, and marched for two hours toward the front lines. Here he literally ascends to higher ground—a hill, which affords him an optical view of the main battlefield—where he is greeted by General Montlivaut and deployed to serve with a battery charged with bombarding six Turkish artillery positions. Aligning himself with his French brothers in arms, becoming momentarily the proverbial “master of all he surveys,” Schwarzenberg gains and communicates a sense of the French “hold” over the region qua geographical space. This was a fraught point of cultural first contact between the author and an oriental group, to say the least. This group was made up largely of Turkish janissaries and Kabyle Bedouin tribesmen in Ottoman military service. While showing a sneaking respect for their impassioned fighting and physical strength, Schwarzenberg deploys a cluster of stock orientalist stereotypes, presenting the Turks as warriors driven by their fanatical Islamic faith. The Turks are described as entering battle with a “furchtbaren Allah-Geschreih” (25). Through the negatively connoted adjective, this ritual becomes an expression of a Western sense of dread toward Islam. In fact, the author extended his sense of horror to descriptions of the Turks’ conduct in battle: rather than killing, the Turks “murder” their French foes and then behead them (27). Significant, though, is the fact that the terms “Türken” and “Muselmänner” are freely interchanged within the narrative (25–26). This conflation of secular, ethnic, and national-political categories not only speaks of a situation in which military concerns override the need for such distinctions, but also of a strategy that allows the author to reduce his enemy to a single entity and apply negative value judgments to all aspects of Ottoman/oriental identity with great economy. It is also with great economy that the Turkish forces are swept aside in the text: while the rout of Ottoman troops in Algiers is an incontrovertible historical fact, the narration of their defeat in this text bears the imprint of the author’s orientalizing approach. The image of the Turk needed to be diminished for purposes of the author’s colonial paradigm, in order that it could also be defeated at a narrative level. According to the account, it was excessive Turkish ferocity in combat that contributed to their downfall: being “wütend” (26) exhausts the Turks and their forces fall into disarray, or “Unordnung” (ibid). All of this is in sharp contrast not only to superior French military practice but also to French cold-bloodedness. The coldness refers here not to a negatively connoted lack of compassion, but rather to the cool-headed, rational, and disciplined approach, which allows the French troops to pursue and “eradicate” their foes—and while the term used, “vernichten” (27), certainly implies wholesale and efficient destruction of the Turks, it lacks the savagery and amorality of the loaded term “murder” as perpetrated by the Turkish soldiers. This practice of homogenizing oriental groupings and categories is rife in the text: not only are the terms “Muslim” and “Turk” readily interchanged, but a whole range of ethnic categories are also blurred

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indiscriminately. Indigenous Bedouins, migrant Arabs, and Turks (the latter, ironically enough, the waning colonial masters of the former two) are often blended into one oriental horde, which is suffused with associations of fanatical Islam, though which ultimately takes on the quality of weakness needed to pacify, conquer, or destroy it. These are clearly instances of classic orientalist practice toward Islam as outlined by Said.20 From the examples cited thus far, Schwarzenberg appears to be a fully integrated part of the French military machine, caught up in the fervor of the colonial campaign and trading in orientalist stereotypes of his foes. Yet the text is more complex on several counts. For one thing, it is worth noting that the author’s allegiance to his French employers was not absolute and unquestioning. He offers an extended, scathing, almost caricature sketch of a typical French grenadier, whose characteristics seem to clash with the author’s own ideal of a soldier. Schwarzenberg finds the French grenadier overly predisposed to talking and in need of careful treatment: Der französische Soldat muß auf eigentümliche Weise behandelt werden. Vor allem muß man mit ihm sprechen und auch ihn sprechen lassen. Das strenge Stillschweigen, welches die Disziplin den nordischen Heeren gebietet, wäre ihm durchaus unerträglich . . . Sprechen und mit sich sprechen lassen ist dem Franzosen, wie den Weibern, ein unüberwindbares Bedürfnis. (30)

The earlier image of the cool-headed, disciplined French soldier seems only to be valid when he is contrasted with the irrational, barbarous Turk whom he is routing in battle. When contrasted with the stoic, masculine Germanic soldier, the grenadier is emasculated through comparisons to chattering women. For Schwarzenberg this cultural “effeminacy” also constitutes one of the more virtuous traits of the French soldiers: their passivity and willingness to accept the word of their superiors without question. This trait, asserts the author, is only shared by the Hungarian soldier (ibid). Here, though, Schwarzenberg is writing about more than the temperament of individual soldiers or even nations. In the 1830s the Hungarian Diet, suppressed for over a decade under Metternich and reconvened in 1825, was proving politically troublesome in pursuing Magyar nationalist agendas that did not sit well with imperial policy. By likening the French to the Hungarians via a stereotype of passive obedience (a trait associated on other occasions in the text with oriental cultures), both nations are rendered subservient in Austrian eyes. However, this is particularly significant in the case of the author’s colonial employer, France, which is compared via a slighting analogy to one of the Austrian Empire’s subordinate nations. Schwarzenberg is, then, harboring a fantasy of Austrian strength and (colonial) supremacy in Europe. Critical attitudes toward France and its army are further pursued in a manner that impacts on the author’s treatment of the indigenous peoples

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of the Maghreb. Schwarzenberg recounts an incident in which he discovers the corpses of French soldiers who have obviously been tortured and executed in the manner reputedly prescribed for captured infidel warriors by certain Islamic teachings. A group of French colonists and soldiers gathers, shouting for the lynching of captive Bedouins, whom they do not hold personally responsible for the killings but on whom they wish to exact revenge nonetheless. Speaking in perfect French, Schwarzenberg manages to appeal to the French corporal’s sense of national honor and reassert military discipline, injecting some cool Germanic rationality into the choleric and irrational Frenchman’s thinking: the author cannot believe, he writes, that a corporal of the 37th Division would stoop to the level of a common executioner (35–36). This, though, has little to do with the traveler’s identification with Bedouin tribesmen he is willing to kill or see killed in other contexts, and much more to do with highlighting to the reader that Austrians make more disciplined soldiers and also more decent colonists than do their French counterparts. Despite this sense of latent colonial rivalry with the French, Schwarzenberg’s text goes on to exhibit a range of colonial modes of thinking and writing. We find increasingly sophisticated strategies for dividing the spaces and communities of Algiers along various conceptual lines in a manner that seeks to assert European control. In his account of the period in which French forces consolidated their hold over Algiers, the presence of indigenous people, culture, and religion is not a blind spot as in Dürr’s narrative. The text engages more directly with and also seeks to exert control over these groupings in subtle ways. The author tells, for instance, of an encounter between a companion of his, the anonymous soldier “S. . .” and Kumru, the young wife of an influential Arab merchant. In the absence of her husband, Kumru and “S. . .” begin a rooftop flirtation, eventually meetings are arranged, and a passionate affair begins. Within the account Kumru’s sexuality is revealed to the European reader to particular effect. To facilitate the meetings, the young woman has to be able to leave her dwelling without attracting attention. Her chosen disguise involves adding elaborate European stockings to her native dress, a combination of clothing that was the calling card of “leichtfertige[r] Dirnen” (61), or the prostitutes of Algiers. Within the intimate setting of the relationship, oriental sexuality is equally problematic: Kumru’s passionate nature, her devotion and “Hingebung” quickly become “beinahe anstössig” (ibid) to her new lover. Growing tired of her “orientalische . . . Feuerliebe” (ibid), “S. . .” ends the affair. Subsequently, after disappearing from public life, Kumru’s decomposing corpse is found in a shallow grave: according to reports of a bath attendant, the vengeful husband had caught Kumru attempting to hide the incriminating garments, forced her to drink poison, and, after an abortive attempt to murder “S. . . ,” fled the city and could not be tracked down by police.21

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On one level, the passage exposes and critiques the sexual exploitation of women and violence against them instigated by men: “S. . . ,” who is every bit as much the instigator of the liaison as is Kumru, suffers little as a result of the episode, the husband escapes any form of punishment, and neither figure appeals to the reader. The only “punishment” delivered in the text affects solely Kumru. On another level, though, the text betrays Schwarzenberg’s strategy of representing the mingling of colonizer and colonized, the movement between culturally and physically bounded spaces, in terms of a morally dubious, illicit, and ultimately disastrous relationship. In this way the text serves to re-enforce a paradigm of necessary segregation. The representation of Kumru’s openly unveiled bathing effectively lifts the curtain on a harem-like space. In entering this space, “S. . .” commits multiple transgressions: he facilitates a married woman’s act of infidelity, though he also crosses into an oriental space, and also into what ought to be an exclusively feminine space. The objectification and overt sexualization of Kumru occurs under the gaze of the soldier, a position from which Schwarzenberg as narrator distances himself. However, the reader is also allowed, indeed is made to share that experience with the character “S. . . ,” through both the narrative and the pictorial reiteration of this boundary crossing. Working in tandem with the book’s illustrations, which show ink line drawings of veiled Moorish women on one page, then display an unveiled Kumru washing her hair on the next (58–60), the text titillates its readers by having them share visually in the soldier’s experiences, only, in a sense, to admonish us for having looked by revealing the affair’s tragic outcome. Kumru is also presented in terms of multiple, alleged transgressions. The leitmotif marking her “wrongdoing”—that of her attire and the stockings in particular—is the very thing that allows her to move beyond her prescribed physical and sexual-moral spaces. As the stockings are European in provenance, however, Kumru is also engaging in a form of “cultural cross-dressing,” combining the trappings of European identity with her own indigenous dress. The text opts to present such cross-cultural practice as an undesirable sexual vice. At a narrative level Schwarzenberg’s text seeks to impose and police both the external borders of the colony and internal cultural segregations running throughout it. The affair with Kumru warns of the danger of intercultural contamination and the text effectively shies away from any other engagements of this sort. In fact, the descriptions of Algiers, both as a physically and culturally demarcated space, are marked by wider fears of the colony’s collapse, and we find traces of both personal-psychological and collective paranoia. During the episode “Nachtwache,” the author recounts a ride out from his quarters into the rural hinterland. Losing his bearings, he is given directions by French soldiers that will help him avoid an encampment of enemy Bedouins. However, the terrain eludes the (inferior) knowledge of the French colonists: instead of being confronted by a

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promised two-way fork in the road, Schwarzenberg finds three paths. The one he chooses leads him into the path of six black turbaned figures, riding at haste toward him and accompanied by the sounds of gunfire. After apparently pursuing the author, who reconnects with French troops, the pursuers reveal themselves as Jewish refugees, “arme . . . Teufel,” attempting to flee from a third, unnamed group (40–41). Exposed in what figures here as a “border” region, the author writes in a confessional mode, expressing shame at his own poor soldiering. The episode holds greater significance, however, as Schwarzenberg conflates one distinct cultural group—the Jews, who are themselves under threat here—with that of an indistinct and threatening enemy, whom he fears might make incursions into the space he seeks to control. On another occasion, the author evokes the presence of the absent other-as-enemy in his text. Amid unsubstantiated reports of an army of forty thousand Arabs gathering to retake the city, an English fleet sailing to attack the French, and, most troublingly, of “weit ausgebreiteten Verschwörungen der Mauern und zurückgeblieben Türken in der Stadt” to open the gates of Algiers, allowing these multiple invaders to retake the city (42), Schwarzenberg and a fellow soldier mistakenly believe the city to be already overrun. Believing himself besieged, he hunkers down overnight and eventually shoots at two marauding Bedouins, only to find at sunrise that these were the chimney pots of the American consulate. While the actual absence of real anticolonial forces within the colony might emphasize the integrity of its borders and the extent of French control, these cases of a deep form of “mistaken identity” lay bare the processes by which physical space is reimagined as colonial, and communities are reimagined as the “orientals” controlled within that space. The text also shows, however, that the fantasy of complete cultural and military control is constantly questioned, and marked as much by fear as it is by the confident exertion of power: or to appeal again to Polaschegg’s aforementioned distinction, the orient as a colonial space in which cultural “difference” has known parameters is threatened by the orient as a “strange,” unknown space.

V. Conclusion Timotheus Dürr engages with much of Algiers by not engaging, by denying it representation; he has and seeks no indigenous informants; he depends on the conceptually and militarily demarcated space of the colony, but never looks at borders, at the still “oriental” spaces that lie beyond or indeed within them. His Maghreb is a blank canvas on which the Christian colonist can imprint both himself and his faith-based community. And as we have seen, Dürr’s publication was effectively a Protestant church report that seeks to depict and, through its publication, continue to fund the Protestant community of Algiers, though does so without criticizing the wider colonization of Algiers or Dürr’s royal French patron.

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A consideration of the publication history of Schwarzenberg’s work makes his case more complex, however. The edition of his book discussed in this chapter is heavily abridged, in fact containing merely a selection of episodes spanning some 115 pages, excerpted from the original five volumes of 1844–48: this selection was edited and commentated by the Viennese Germanist Eduard Castle, and published with the Rikola Verlag in 1925 in Vienna. In his introduction of 1925, however, Castle is explicit in his desire to rehabilitate Schwarzenberg as a more canonical literary figure. For the editor, the reputation of this author, who was “heute für Deutschland ein Verschollener, für Österreich ein Vergessener” (v), had suffered for two main reasons: Trotz mancher gerechten Würdigung . . . blieb auf ihm der Bann des Illiberalismus, aber wohl noch mehr des Österreichertums und jener echtösterreichischen Bescheidenheit Lasten, die aus lauter Anerkennung für die Leistungen des Auslands, das Eigenwüschige geringschätzt, sich selbst gern in den Schatten stellt, verdeckt und versteckt. (v)

The author had been unfittingly labeled an illiberal. This, coupled with the characteristic and misplaced modesty shown by Austrians toward their own culture, had meant that Schwarzenberg was yet to be enshrined within the pantheon of great European writers. Producing this collection for a series entitled “Romantik der Weltliteratur,” Castle wishes to present Schwarzenberg as a figure deserving of such a higher profile. For all of his patriotic (though perhaps not crassly nationalistic) overtones, the editor is still careful to try to counter negative images of Schwarzenberg. In the midst of battle, writes Castle, the Fürst figured “nicht als sensationslüsterner Schlachtenbummler, oder als feder- und geschäftsgewandter Kriegskorrespondent, sondern als tapferer Mitstreiter, als leidenschaftlicher Parteigänger, immer auf der Seite derer, die das historische Recht für sich—und das Schicksal gegen sich hatten” (vii). Throughout the text, Schwarzenberg is very much shown to be in French military service, a formidable organ of French colonialism and an orientalist thinker, albeit one who also plays with the possibility of belittling his French employers. Despite rare moments of empathy with the suffering of the indigenous peoples of Algiers, he spends much of his time demonizing Turks and Bedouins. In the passage cited above, Schwarzenberg is shown as a courageous soldier, though one driven not by blind national loyalties and siding rather with the underdogs of history against whom fate is pitted. It is difficult to see the French as such historical underdogs in this text, given that so much of their campaign is portrayed (at least within explicit rhetoric) in terms of military success. If this is so, then it implies that Castle is in fact aligning Schwarzenberg with the routed Turks or suppressed Bedouins, a view that is hardly plausible either. Ultimately,

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then, a consideration of this edition of text is all the more informative, for Castle’s assertions about Schwarzenberg’s motivations, though opaque, contradictory, or implausible, actually lay bare his attempt to “redeploy” the author by sanitizing a colonial mercenary author for twentieth-century consumption.22 Neither of the two texts examined gained a foothold within the canon of nineteenth-century high literature in German. And neither rethinks or avoids to any great extent stock orientalist tropes, or the technique of crassly reimagining the geography of the Orient in a way that might mark them out from the main corpus of colonial travel writing from the period. Yet each of the texts functions as an illuminating document in its own right. Both serve then as a reminder of how German speakers could be as complicit in the processes of literary “orientalization” as travelers more directly identifiable with colonial nations: any rhetoric of disassociation from the wider French colonial enterprise, while significant, often has more to do with a competing European ideology—national, political, or religious—then it does with a truly anticolonial stance. Perhaps most significantly, both texts expose the range of differing strategies by which travel writing in German sought to divide and control Algiers, first by separating it geographically and culturally from the rest of the region, and second by managing its internal diversity of cultures and communities either by denying them representation or by imposing and policing strict lines of segregation between colonist and colonized, Occident and Orient, Christianity and Islam pro re nata. In addition to complicating productively our understanding of the relationship between early nineteenth-century, German-speaking travelers and issues of colony and empire, another value of these texts derives from the fact that each shows in operation the complex techniques of spatial reimagining and identity manipulation, which always seem to come into play whenever Europeans write about the so-called Orient.

Notes 1

A wide-ranging and informative study is Peter Dunwoodie, Writing French Algeria (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998).

2

On migration see: Julia Clancy-Smith, Mediterraneans: North Africa and Europe in an Age of Migration, c. 1800–1900 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011).

3

Ernstpeter Ruhe first wrote about the Maghreb in Germanophone travel writing in his concise survey “Christensklaven als Beute nordafrikanischer Piraten. Das Bild des Maghreb im Europa des 16–19 Jahrhunderts” in Europas islamische Nachbarn. Studien zur Literatur und Geschichte des Maghreb, ed. Ernstpeter Ruhe (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumannn, 1993), 159–86. While earlier in this period, fantastical, semi-fictional reports reduced the Maghreb to the myth of the

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infamous Barbary Coast, the home of Muslim corsair pirates, the Enlightenment period gave rise to different written accounts that demythologized the region. With the advent of French colonial expansion in the early nineteenth century, German travelers oscillated between these tendencies, with some seeking to legitimize their participation in colonialism by re-imagining themselves as latter-day Crusaders in heathen lands, and others seeking to present colonization as a peaceful even fraternal endeavour that brought with it opportunities for trade and cultural exchange with a more neutrally defined other culture. This chapter expands on this latter phase of colonization, examining in detail the more reductive strategies adopted by some German speakers for subordinating the colonized region to forms of physical and conceptual power. I remain indebted to Ruhe’s foundational work in this area, as well as his collation, digitization, and online publication of rare travel writing in the form of the “Online Maghreb Bibliothek”: http://www.maghreb-onlinebibliothek.romanistik.uni-wuerzburg.de/ (accessed 15 July 2013). 4

The full citations are: Timotheus Jakob Dürr, Vier Monate in Algerien: Bericht über meine Amtsführung in Dely-Ibrahim, in einem Schreiben an die PastoralConferenz zu Straßburg, von Timotheus Jakob Dürr, Pfarrer der evangelischen Gemeinde von Dely-Ibrahim, in Algerien (Strasbourg: Wittwe Berger-Levrault, 1844) [hereafter cited parenthetically by page number]; Friedrich Fürst von Schwarzenberg, Aus dem Wanderbuche eines verabschiedeten Lanzknechtes, ed. Eduard Castle (Vienna: Rikola Verlag, 1925). The original five volumes of this work are sometimes listed using the term “Landsknechts,” implying a servant of one’s homeland or nation, rather than the military term “Lanzknecht,” referring originally to one who bore a lance or pike in battle. Early editions and those later reprints of Schwarzenberg’s works that remain faithful to them also contain an error in the author’s name: there he appears as Friedrich Fürst von Schwarzenberg. 5

See: Susanne Zantop, Colonial Fantasies: Conquest, Family, and Nation in Precolonial Germany, 1770–1870 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1997). 6

Under Catholic French dominion, Strasbourg had remained a mixed city in confessional terms with politically and socially influential Protestant elites, many of whom were German speakers or immigrants from Germany. See Anthony J. Steinhoff, The Gods of the City: Protestantism and Religious Culture in Strasbourg, 1870–1914 (Leiden: Brill, 2008), which offers a range of data and commentary on the first half of the nineteenth century, esp. 35 and 85. 7

For a useful distinction between the terms “patriotism” and “nationalism” in the eighteenth century, though still of use here, see: Ritchie Robertson, “Cosmopolitanism, Patriotism, and Nationalism in the German and Austrian Enlightenment,” in Enlightenment Cosmopolitanism, ed. David Adams and Galin Tihanov (London: Legenda, 2011), esp. 12–30. 8

See Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (London: Vintage, 1994), esp. 1–19. See also the introduction to this volume.

9

The Maghreb offers an interesting case in point. The region has been referred to by many names throughout history, each of which came with differing associations. In the contemporary era, the term “Maghreb,” derived from the Arabic

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al-Maghrib, meaning “place of sunset,” or al-Maghrib al-‘arabī, “the Arabic West” (still the present-day Arabic name for Morocco, also derived from the Arabic word) has taken root in Western discourse. This is multiply significant, as it marks not only a shift toward postcolonial aspirations in Western thought as it seeks to share the perspective of its historical other, but reminds us that, within Arabic paradigms, the area has also long been a perimeter with the inverse function of marking the geopolitical limits of the Muslim world and forming a problematic interface with the West-as-Europe. These shifts in nomenclature not only mark the way in which culturally determined ideologies have sought to appropriate the region as part of a sequence of mutually “superseding” geographies, but also illustrate the wider concept of “imaginary geographies” at work. 10

See Nigel Thrift and Mike Crang, eds., Thinking Space (London: Routledge, 2001). This collection is useful for two reasons: first, its concise introduction offers an accessible summary into theories of how physical space can be demarcated along social, cultural-historical, or gendered lines (1–30, esp. 9); second, it contains a useful essay on the role of spatial thinking in Said’s work: Derek Gregory, “Edward Said’s Imaginative Geographies” (302–48). 11

See Andrea Polaschegg, Der andere Orientalismus: Regeln deutsch-morgenländischer Imagination im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005), esp. 39–59. 12

Clifford Geertz is credited with, among other things, first instigating the socalled linguistic turn in ethnology. Dismissing the notion that traveling to the “source” of a culture granted the travel writer authentic access to its “essence,” Geertz viewed written accounts of encounters between subjects of differing cultures as limited constructs in language. Travelogues are narrative constructions, in a sense fictions, whose value is always relativized by the complex and multiplanar nature of the encounter beyond the textual account. See: Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays (New York: Basic Books, 1973). Building on Geertz’s work, James Clifford has subsequently busied himself with applying the so-called ethnographic approach to cultural studies, developing further the idea of the multiple spheres of identity within which both the observer and the observed function in travel writing: both parties are simultaneously social, gendered, religious, and ethnic beings, and ostensibly simple encounters are to be looked at, written about, and read about on these multiple thematic plains, and are subject to constant flux. See: James Clifford, Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997). 13

See Dunwoodie, Writing French Algeria, on the infamous “fan incident,” 7–8.

14

Ibid., 8–9.

15

French colonization met with considerable resistance from a number of tribes, which united successfully for a time under the iconic figure of Abd El-Kader (1808–83), who was named emir by local tribes. El-Kader enjoyed a number of successes, though was ultimately captured and forced to surrender in 1847. See Dunwoodie, Writing French Algeria, 10–11. 16

Missionaries are understood to have both critiqued and supported the politics of colonial powers: they were culturally sensitive ethnographers learning about indigenous languages and cultures, though often in order to convert their audiences to the one true faith; and they ministered to their own flocks, though they

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provided altruistic social services and healthcare to non-Christians. On (particularly Catholic) missionaries in the Maghreb regions, see: Julia Clancy-Smith, “Muslim Princes, Female Missionaries, and Trans-Mediterranean Migrations: The Soeurs de Saint-Joseph de l’Apparition in Tunisia, c. 1840–1881,” in In God’s Empire: French Missionaries in the Modern World, ed. Owen White and J. P Daughton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 152–83. 17

The Kingdom of God is referred to throughout the Bible, is common to all denominations of Christianity, and refers to both the Christian community on earth at any one time and, in evangelical thinking, to the end times, the future return of Christ and the reestablishment of His dominion over the earth. On the different forms and functions of the concept in the Judeo-Christian tradition, see: John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus: The Roots of the Problem and the Person, Anchor Bible 1 (New York: Double Day, 1991), 175. 18

See: Matthew 10:16: “Siehe, ich send euch wie Schafe inmitten von Wölfen; so seid nun klug wie die Schlangen und einfältig wie die Tauben.” 19

See Castle’s introduction to the collection (v).

20

See: Edward Said, Orientalism, 3rd ed. (London: Penguin, 2003). Said wrote that a reductive image of the Muslim was “the very epitome of an outsider against which the whole of European civilization from the Middle Ages on was founded” (70). 21

For a broader discussion of the issue of (particularly female) sexuality in orientalist discourses of this period, see Ulrike Stamm’s chapter in this volume. 22

Eduard Castle himself remains a highly ambivalent figure, not least in political terms, making it difficult to discern any clear ideological motivations underlying his comments on Schwarzenberg. He has been seen both as a social and intellectual liberal and a Nazi collaborator. Little has been written about him, though the relevant sources include: Herwig Würtz and Gerhard Renner, eds., Eduard Castle: Sein Beitrag zur Erforschung der österreichischen Literaturgeschichte (Vienna: Wiener Stadt- und Landesbibliothek, 1995); and Uwe Baur, “‘Eine Mehrheit an Methoden muß zur Verfügung stehen,  . . .’ ‘Innere Emigration’ eines Germanisten: Hugo (v.) Kleinmayr,” in Literatur der “Inneren Emigration” aus Österreich, ed. Johann Holzner and Karl Müller (Vienna: Docker, 1998), 357–75. While most of these studies concur on Castle’s involvement or sympathies with liberal circles prior to 1937, Baur highlights his apparent anti-Semitism and his explicit condemnation of social-democratic politics and liberal intellectualism. Baur does not make simplistic assertions about Castle holding literally national socialist beliefs, but examines his motivations and strategies between 1937 and 1945 for apparently collaborating with Nazism. Financially less than secure, having struggled for some time to gain a professorship, Castle appears to have conducted his academic and publishing careers with an eye to expediency. More recently Castle’s actions have received more sympathetic treatment—on this see: http://www.adulteducation.at/de/historiografie/personen/217/ (accessed 15 July 2013).

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5: The Jew, the Turk, and the Indian: Figurations of the Oriental in the German-Speaking World Shaswati Mazumdar

T

three events in the period 1840 to 1857/58 and discusses how orientalist ideas were used in each of them to construct three different figurations of the oriental: the Jew, the Turk, and the Indian. The first event is the Damascus affair (1840), in which Damascan Jews were forced to confess under torture to the ritual murder of a Christian priest. The incident was widely covered in the leading European and German dailies in general and the emerging Jewish press. The second event is the Crimean War (1853–56)—a war that is central to the oriental question as it is known in German—in which conflicting European interests in regard to the declining Ottoman Empire coalesced with larger innerEuropean power conflicts. The war is seen as the first to become a media event. The third event is the Revolt of 1857 in India, which also became a media event though it took place in distant India and did not directly involve the states of the European continent. All three events drew an extraordinary amount of attention in the European press in general and also in the German press, while the latter two also became the stuff of popular novels. In fact these events took place at a time when “print capitalism,” as Benedict Anderson calls it, had begun to provide the basis for imagining the nation, though it is equally a time of expanding colonial interests.1 All three events can be implicated in the forces of rising nationalism and of inner-European power rivalries even as they simultaneously reflect contentious, often conflicting, notions of German and European identity as well as of expanding European domination of the extra-European world. It is in this terrain in which nationalist aspirations are ineluctably impelled by colonial ambitions (however latent) that the figure of the oriental appears at each of the moments in different forms: as the Jew, the Turk, and the Indian. It is a figure that is unstable and adaptable to different purposes. This chapter gives an account of how this tripartite figure appears during each of the events and discusses its different functions. The Brockhaus Encyclopedia in its 1853 edition noted two reasons for the significant development of all facets of oriental scholarship and HIS CHAPTER FOCUSES ON

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practical information about the Orient: Europe’s expanding interaction with the Orient as a result of trade and colonization and the ever more persistent efforts to trace back the seeds of “our modern being” to its very beginnings in Asia.2 Both these factors impinged on German identity, although disparate versions of the Orient and the oriental were differently inflected by them. The ambiguity of the term oriental becomes obvious when it is used to refer to such different peoples and places. As Andrea Polaschegg has pointed out, the Orient in the nineteenth century was a vast geographical space bringing together peoples, cultures, languages, and other phenomena that were extremely heterogeneous but that could nevertheless coalesce in a process of discursive signification, such that each of these phenomena could function as a pars pro toto of the whole, while also retaining a differential meaning.3 It is this process, as it is articulated specifically in political debate in the media and in popular novels, that connects the events discussed here—events that are otherwise quite distinct from one another.

I. The Damascus Affair, or the “Inner Oriental” In 1840, following the disappearance in Damascus of a Christian Capuchin priest and his Arab servant, several respected, well-to-do Damascan Jews were charged with a form of ritual murder that was allegedly sanctioned in the Jewish religious scriptures, and were brutally tortured with the purpose of extracting confessions. The incident drew intense diplomatic interventions from the French, Austrian, and British governments. European diplomats stationed in the Ottoman Empire, of which Damascus, in Syria, was then a part, exercised powers not only as protectors of the rights of European citizens but also of the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire.4 The initial intervention by the French consul (Count de RattiMenton) in support of the local Catholic community and of the missing priest lent plausibility to the charge of ritual murder and approval by extension of the methods of torture employed to extract confessions, which caused the death of four of the accused Jews and included the arrest of sixty children as a measure to pressure the parents. After an Austrian citizen was also charged in the case, the Austrian consul intervened, speaking out against the torture methods and in support of the accused Jews.5 In the European press the incident became a symbol of an oriental horror tale. The French government generally supported the actions of its consul and the French press gave wide publicity to the incident, thus creating a situation in which not only the happenings in Damascus but also Judaism itself became an object of debate and a target of the charge of ritual murder.6 Whereas the British and Austrian press (with some exceptions) largely remained critical of or at least neutral in regard to the charge of ritual murder, the German press reflected in the main the views publicized in the

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French press, as seen in the two most widely respected German newspapers of the time, the Augsburger Allgemeine Zeitung (AAZ) and the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung (LAZ), both of which carried extensive reportage on the incident. Seeing the trend in the press coverage as a threat, there was an unprecedented effort by European Jews to organize a diplomatic counterinitiative and a campaign against the insinuations about them in the press. The “mission to the East,” as it was called, included Albert Crémieux and Moses Montefiore as two leading representatives of French and British Jewry and was eventually successful in procuring the release of the accused Jews and the official declaration of their innocence. The Damascus affair has been seen as the first transregional media event and 1840 as a significant year in the emergence of a Jewish press in Europe in general and the German-speaking states in particular, though a separate Jewish press existed only in France and the German states. The German Jewish press had in fact just begun to emerge as a significant forum reflecting the concerns and opinions of different sections of German Jewry. Four German Jewish periodicals played an important role in this intervention, but I will restrict myself to references from the two most prominent of these, the Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums (AZJ), brought out by Ludwig Phillipson (which supplied the largest number of reports and commentaries), and Der Orient, edited by the well-known orientalist Julius Fürst (the first Jew to receive the title of professor at a German university).7 Initially reacting to the reports in the French press, hopes were expressed as in the AZJ that an “enlightened” Germany had a better knowledge of Judaism and would prevail over France: Deutschland [hat] in diesem Punkte das Uebergewicht über Frankreich. Das letztere, ungründlich und unwissend, glaubt Beschuldigungen dieser Art noch immer leicht, Deutschland, welches das Judenthum besser kennt, lacht darüber. Die deutschen Zeitungen haben das Richtige sogleich eingesehen, und das ganze Faktum als Erpressungsmittel des Pascha dargestellt.8

However, such hopes soon turned out to be unfounded: “Die empörende Weise, mit der die französische und deutsche Journalistik diesen Gegenstand behandelt hat, hat ihm eine allgemeine Wichtigkeit zugewandt. . . .”9 Concern was specifically acute in regard to the German-language AAZ and the LAZ, so that the German Jewish periodicals felt compelled to turn their efforts to countering the reportage in the French and German press. The reports consisted in the main of detailed accounts of the happenings in Damascus, especially the efforts of the “mission to the East.” The misrepresentation of Judaism in the French and German press was a major preoccupation of the periodicals, and the appeal not only to their readers but also to a larger European and specifically German

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public was a significant underlying conception: “Daß diese Verleumdung noch heutigen Tages durch eins der geachtetsten deutschen Blätter ins Publikum gebracht werden konnte, muß jeden Freund deutscher Bildung mit tiefer Betrübniß erfüllen. . . .”10 The appeal was made in the name of European “civilization” against “barbaric” practices still continuing in the Orient. This appeal was most eloquently voiced and pursued in the French press by Albert Crémieux, a reputed French advocate and the French representative in the “mission to the East.” Each of his missives were translated and reproduced in the German Jewish press. Crémieux highlights the specific role that European Jews could play for the cause of civilization and progress in these regions of fanaticism and ignorance: Es ist gut, die Juden des Abendlands mit einem heiligen Band des Schutzes mit den Juden im Orient zu verknüpfen, dessen Wirkungen für die Sache der Zivilisation und des Fortschritts in diesen Regionen des Fanatismus und des Unwissens außerordentlich groß sein können.11

Similar formulations can be found in the German Jewish periodicals, as for instance the following one from Der Orient: Für die gebildeten Leser dieses Blattes bedurfte es keines Beweises, daß ein Verbrechen, was in einem barbarischen Lande von einzelnen Individuen begangen sein sollte, selbst wenn diese Beschuldigung als wahr erwiesen hätte, doch niemals einem ganzen Volksstamm auf einer durchaus verschiedenen Bildungsstufe angerechnet werden könne.12

Notwithstanding differences in the positions of the periodicals concerned, what is more specific to this press, however, is not only the dichotomy of civilization versus barbarism but also the emphasis on German scholarship and the repeated attempts to appeal to a “more enlightened” German reader.13 Though both the AAZ and the LAZ claimed to take a neutral stance, the articles questioning the charge of ritual murder were often by Jews and they also frequently appeared in the form of (Jewish) advertisements, this latter form highlighting the urgent need felt for intervention. Such advertisements appeared in both papers but more often in the LAZ, the most frequent one being the announcement of the new Jewish weekly Der Orient. The LAZ played the central role “both in first fanning embers of suspicion (since mid-March 1840) and, subsequently, in extinguishing them.”14 Moreover, “some of the most influential newspapers in the world—most conspicuously the Times of London (then already at the height of its prestige) and the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung—would now devote vast amounts of space to the

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question of whether the Talmud prescribed or legitimated ritual murder.”15 Another factor ascribed to the eagerness of the mainstream press in regard to these events was the commercial interest that newspapers had in reporting sensational events without concern for their authenticity or the possible consequences following publication: Die Damasker Vorgänge sind wie ein Stein, der, in ein ruhiges Gewässer geworfen, Wasserringel in immer weiteren Kreisen hervorbringt, die zuletzt auch das friedliche Ufer berühren. Darum hüte sich Jeder, den Dämon des Vorurtheils und Wahnes von Neuem hervorzurufen, denn die Folgen sind oft unberechenbar, und wirken bis in Gegenden nach, wohin dergleichen nimmer vermuthet worden. Es ist dies aber auch die Nachtseite der Tagespresse, die mit Begierde jeden Gegenstand, und oft auf unlautere Weise, ergreift, der dem Publikum ein Interesse abzugewinnen scheint. So schleudern die Dinge in die Kreise des Volkes, die daselbst nur traurige, unmoralische wie irreligiöse Wirkungen haben müssen.16

Most prominent among the critical articles in the AAZ were the ones sent by Heinrich Heine from Paris.17 All in all, it is clear that the German press tended to be ambivalent on the issue rather than taking a forthright position against the obvious insinuations against Jews and Judaism. Various reasons may be attributed to the collective actions undertaken by leading Jews and the reactions in the German Jewish periodicals. The Damascus affair in all its ramifications was evidently perceived as a potential trigger to revive anti-Jewish sentiments and a consequent threat to the incomplete and uneven process of Jewish emancipation in the various German states. The responses by Jews made with appeals to shared values of enlightenment and European civilization against oriental barbarism have been seen as efforts to assimilate and integrate but also as a dramatic example of “emancipationist” politics.18 The anxiety caused by the events and the ambivalent signals given by the European and German newspapers also sparked off an effort to organize pan-European Jewish solidarity, which gathered strength in the following decades.19 What is interesting is the fact that the figure of the oriental is deployed in both the Jewish periodicals and the mainstream German press. Both make a distinction between European and oriental, the former seeking thereby to identify European Jews with European civilization, the latter effectively, if not willingly, undermining this identification.

II. The Crimean War, or the Oriental Question Was sich bei jener Damaszener Blutfrage am betrübsamsten herausstellte, ist die Unkenntnis der morgenländischen Zustände, die . . . einst zu den bedenklichsten Mißgriffen verleiten dürfte,

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wenn nicht mehr jene kleine syrische Blutfrage, sondern die weit größere Weltblutfrage, jene fatale, verhängnisvolle Frage, welche wir die orientalische nennen, eine Lösung oder Anstalten zur Lösung erfordern möchte.20

In his articles on the Damascus affair, Heine seems to have consistently used the term Blutfrage (blood question) rather than the term Blutanklage (blood libel or accusation), generally used by others. His ironic reformulation of the term is suggestive of the underlying insinuation of difference between Christians/Europeans and Jews—a matter of blood (and thereby of race), an insinuation that surfaced during incidents such as the Damascus affair. In one of his articles, Heine connects the “minor Syrian” Blutfrage to what he calls the far larger Weltblutfrage (the international blood question), “that ill-fated, ominous question, which we call the Oriental one,” thus suggesting the latter’s politically explosive and potentially bloody nature and simultaneously drawing a parallel between the two sets of binaries—Christians/Europeans versus Jews and Christians/Europeans versus Orientals—evoked by the two terms.21 The Crimean War (1853–55), which has been likened to a kind of “world war” of the nineteenth century,22 was the central event of the oriental question, of the rivalries and tensions thrown up between various contending European powers in the face of the declining power and stability of the Ottoman Empire. Just as it used new industrial technologies (rifles, railways, steamships, the telegraph) and military tactics (trench warfare) for the first time, it was also the first war to become a media event or the first modern media war. Several factors contributed to its extraordinary presence in the media: it marks the beginning of modern news reporting directly from the front,23 of photographic documentation of the battles,24 and more generally of the establishment of the mass media as a powerful player in the public sphere. In this public sphere the conflict became the focus of ideological warfare and a symbolic site for contending definitions of European and national identity.25 In Prussia, which unlike Austria managed to stay out of the military conflict though there were persistent efforts from both sides to draw it in, the impact of the war was primarily ideological. The war and the larger oriental question became the focus of intense controversy in Parliament and in the media, the latter further fueled by the allegiance of some newspapers to specific political parties. The fact that censorship laws made coverage of and commentaries on issues of domestic policies difficult was also a significant reason for considerable space being devoted to matters abroad or foreign policy issues in the guise of which issues closer to home could also be debated.26 Apart from appearing regularly in newspapers and periodicals, the war was also the subject of several pamphlets and booklets, sometimes published anonymously, and of a fictional

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representation in a voluminous popular novel of the time. The central concern in all these publications was with policies that would or would not benefit German nationhood. Political views were mainly split between those who saw the war as the struggle of European progress and civilization against the backward, Eastern barbarism of Russia and those who saw Russia as the last bulwark of Christianity and conservatism against the twin threat of British liberalism with its model of capitalism and of revolutionary socialism.27 While newspaper sales suggest that the liberal newspapers had more readers,28 the conservative position in favor of continuing friendship with Russia while staying out of the military conflict remained in place. Both sides deployed orientalist tropes to buttress their arguments; the liberal, pro-Western lobby using them to stigmatize the Russians, the conservatives for the purpose of emphasizing the religious divide between Christianity and Islam.29 These tropes were drawn from the propaganda launched by the two powers directly involved in the conflict, both of which represented their respective enemies, the Russians or the Turks, as barbaric orientals.30 It is interesting to note in this context that in 1854 the historian Leopold von Ranke prepared, at the request of the kaiser, a memorandum on the oriental question (“Zur orientalischen Frage. Gutachten”),31 in which he put forward quite specific views on a possible solution. Ranke conceived the problem essentially as a religious one, that is, of securing the civil and religious rights of the Christian communities against their violent subjugation by the Muslims in the Ottoman Empire, a situation that called for intervention by the Christian powers of Europe: Die christlichen Mächte, obwohl eifersüchtig auf einander und mit einander streitend oder vielmehr eben in diesem Streite, sind, wie durch ein göttliches Geschick berufen, jenen anzugreifen; es ist augenscheinlich, daß es nur ihres entschieden ausgesprochenen Willens bedarf, um diesem für sie selbst entwürdigenden Zustande ein Ende zu machen. Haben sie aber die Macht, so haben sie auch ohne Zweifel eine heilige Pflicht dazu.32

The solution he proposed was a strict, even spatial segregation of the religious communities with separate administrative and legal jurisdiction while maintaining the overall rule of the sultan. The memorandum apparently found approval with the kaiser, though no practical consequences ensued, given Prussia’s neutrality in the military conflict.33 While the Prussian conservatives (including Bismarck in particular) argued largely for maintaining neutrality, their newspaper, the Neue Preußische Zeitung (known popularly as the Kreuzzeitung because of the iron cross on its banner), often propagated a more aggressive line in favor of Russia. The Russian attack with which the war began was seen as an action in support of Christians in the Ottoman Empire, and the

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liberals were denounced as being friendly to the Turks and inimical to the Russians (“türkenfreundlich und russenfeindlich”). One of the editors of the Kreuzzeitung, a certain Hermann Goedsche, took a decidedly more pronounced pro-Russian stance. He not only wrote regularly on the war for the paper but also published a political pamphlet with the title Die Russen nach Constantinopel! Ein Beitrag zur orientalischen Frage (1854)34 and a sensational and highly popular novel in four volumes entitled Sebastopol (1855–56) under the pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe.35 The cover page included the information “Englische und deutsche Original-Ausgabe,” which along with the English pseudonym suggested an English author having access to ruling circles in Britain who could give an authentic insider account. The novel was the first in a series of what he called historical-political novels of contemporary times. It established his popularity and began his enormously successful career as a writer of popular fiction, so that he could retire in the 1870s as a considerably wealthy man. This is testified to by Theodor Fontane, who was his colleague while working with the Kreuzzeitung.36 In his pamphlet, Goedsche gives three reasons for supporting Russia. First, Russia’s great mission was to hold back the advance of the British shopkeepers in Europe. Second, her mission was also to uphold conservative principles against the socialist revolution—which was at least indirectly supported by Britain and France. Third, the war was a religious war to restore Christianity on the Bosporus. Goedsche’s conception of European and more specifically German identity was evidently based on the exclusion of these three elements: British liberalism, the revolutionary ideas of the socialists and radical democrats, and Islam (or the Orient). On this basis, Goedsche argued that Prussia and Austria should prepare militarily to join the war on the side of Russia in the event of any threat from the Western powers to their borders and be ready then to fight for a decisive victory. Goedsche’s view of Russia as the bulwark of conservative principles was shared by the conservatives, though they shied away from arguing for open military support for Russia in the war.37 The novel that appeared soon afterward elaborates Goedsche’s ideas in an epic fictional setting. Unlike in the case of his later novels, Goedsche could base his narrative on some personal experience of the places he describes, as he had the opportunity to visit Turkey in 1853 on the eve of the war. However, his novel is certainly not limited to his experiences but uses themes and motifs from the existing treasure chest of popular novels set in the Orient as well as the reportage on the ongoing war. Within this oriental landscape Goedsche presents his ideas about European and German politics. The novel, conceived as a narrative of travel and adventure, is largely set in various parts of the Ottoman Empire but it also takes the reader through various European capitals where the decisions leading to

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the outbreak and progress of the war are taken. It ends with the siege and destruction of Sebastopol. It is also a novel about a conspiracy, this being Goedsche’s preferred way of understanding and explaining international politics. The conspirators are the revolutionaries of Europe who function like a secret society and who are out to topple the monarchical, autocratic governments, which were established following the defeat of the 1848 revolutions. One of the main protagonists is the German Dr. Welland, who regrets the mistake he made in joining the revolutionaries in 1848. His adventures include his efforts to escape the clutches of the conspiratorial secret society of revolutionaries, many of whom have found their way to Constantinople. In the process he has ample opportunity to experience all the exotic and erotic charms of the Orient and the orientals, along with their uncivilized depravity, religious fanaticism, and chaotic disorder, all evidently in need of the order that only cultured and civilized Europe could provide. At one point he “involuntarily” asks himself whether such European order would not mean the loss of the poetry of the Orient, but is quickly convinced of the opposite. While European civilization is lauded, the hated British are castigated. It is the Russians and the Prussians who are its morally superior representatives. As Andrea Polaschegg has pointed out, the Ottoman Empire and the Turks have a somewhat different place in the discourses of orientalism in the nineteenth century. The oriental question or crisis was so much a matter of contemporary European political concerns that the historicization with which other Orients could be temporally distanced into the past was not possible.38 The Turks thus appeared as orientals of contemporary times. However, what is evident from the German debates and reflections, fictional and nonfictional, is that it became part of the vocabulary for articulating conflicting notions of the state and the nation, of European and German identity, which were brought to a head by the war and the media coverage that it generated.

III. The Revolt of 1857 in India, or the Colonial Question Following close on the heels of the Crimean War, the Revolt of 1857 in India, the largest anticolonial rebellion of the nineteenth century, was perceived no less as another major crisis, although only Britain was directly affected and the events were so far away from Europe. Though this has so far largely gone unnoticed, it had an extraordinary impact on the European continent in general and also in the German-speaking world.39 It was probably the most prominently reported event during July to October, from the first reports of the outbreak of the mutiny and the capture of Delhi by the rebels until the end of the siege of Delhi (news

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from India usually took around six weeks to arrive). Even after this, the ongoing battles to put down the revolt in other parts of India received wide coverage and in all formats of the press: in dailies, weeklies, illustrated journals, satirical journals, and family magazines. The coverage was not limited to mere reporting but rather the revolt became an object of discussion in front-page editorials and feuilletons, in full-page illustrations and cartoons. The German newspaper readers of the time were undoubtedly better acquainted with Indian geography, history, and its political figures than most readers of current times. As in the case of the Crimean War, one can see in the reportage intense polemics between conservative and liberal camps as well as interventions in the form of pamphlets and booklets by those who were recognized as knowledgeable about India, either through travel or by virtue of their scholarly engagement in oriental/Indological studies. This intense interest must have been fed by the products of several decades of Indological studies in Germany and the significance India (of antiquity) had acquired in conceptions of German identity and nationhood. But the reports of rebellious soldiers turning their weapons on their British rulers seemed to stand in sharp contrast to the orientalist image of the passive Indian, heir to an ancient civilization, which had been the more or less exclusive object of Indological studies. The dominant reactions swung between two poles, as can be seen, for example, in the conservative Kreuzzeitung and the liberal Volks-Zeitung: sharp condemnation of British policies from the conservatives, contrasting with support from the liberals, who saw in Britain the most important bastion of liberalism in Europe. Coming just a year after the Crimean War, the two events were immediately linked with each other. England unterstützte die Türkei gegen Rußland aus der Furcht, die Russen möchten ihm in Indien gefährlich werden; Gott ließ es zu, daß in Folge der Vereinigung der Franzosen mit den Engländern die Russen zurückgeschlagen wurden, obwohl diese zuletzt die Sache des Christenthums und jene die des Muhamedanismus vertraten. Gott der Herr wollte den Russen zeigen, daß, wer ihm dienen will, reines Herzens sein soll; er hat ihren Hochmuth gezüchtigt. England aber, daß schon in jenem Kriege keine Ehren einerntete, zeigt er jetzt deutlich, wie nicht die Russen, sondern er allein zu fürchten ist, wie er ihnen auch in Indien ohne allen Russischen Einfluß beizukommen weiß.40

Colonial/imperialist interests and policies, which are only mutedly in evidence in the subtext of the responses to the Crimean War, became an open object of debate with regard to the Revolt in India: England ist der Lehrherr seiner Kolonien und der ihm untergebenen Völkerschaften. Es hat seinen Nutzen von ihnen, aber es entwickelt diese Völker zur Zivilisation.41

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Der Sieg der Engländer daselbst [wäre] ein Sieg Europa’s; denn nicht die Engländer allein würden an Indien viel verlieren, sondern alle handeltreibenden Nationen würden diesen Verlust, diesen Untergang eines großen Marktes für europäische Erzeugnisse sehr schmerzlich empfunden haben.42

For some time the idea of a transnational Muslim conspiracy, which was also initially presumed to be behind the Revolt in India, had a strong presence in the media coverage. The Kreuzzeitung published a lead article with the suggestive title “Muselmännische Symptome” (Muslim symptoms) that began as follows: Der Krieg der Westmächte gegen Rußland hat im Orient eine furchtbare Saat gesäet. Reisende und Briefe schildern die dortigen Zustände als vollkommen unhaltbar und zu irgend einer Entscheidung drängend. Wir haben wenigstens nicht unbemerkt, nicht unbeachtet vorübergehen lassen wollen, was sich dort vorbereitet. Möglich, daß der so heraufbeschworene Geist an der Indolenz der Asiaten verglüht, möglich aber auch, daß er sich zu sehr ungelegener Zeit erntslicher, als gedacht, bemerkbar macht.43

But this view had to retreat in the face of information that the Revolt had brought together Hindus and Muslims. While the conservatives expressed sympathy with the rebels in order to criticize Britain and attacked the liberals for defending Britain, they also emphasized the civilizational difference between Christian Europe and India. Sympathy for the rebels did not mean sympathy for their cause, which was seen by both sides as a calamity for Europe: England muß und wird den Aufstand in Ostindien niederschlagen, dafür bürgt uns eben—England; es wäre auch eine große Calamität für Europa, ja für die ganze Welt, wenn es nicht geschähe. Aber schwere Opfer wird der Sieg noch kosten und die Lehren, die der jetzige Zustand in Ostindien so laut predigt, werden hoffentlich unvergessen bleiben.44

That some German orientalists also saw in the revolt a possible threat to German Indological studies is unequivocally expressed in the following quote from a booklet published at the time: Die deutsche Wissenschaft, die in allen ihren Vertretern von dem neuen Aufschwunge sprachvergleichender Kunde berührt worden ist, muss lebendig erregt sein von den Gefahren, mit denen die europäische Kultur in Indien bedroht scheint. Denn sie hat mit erobert und Beute heimgebracht aus dem grossen Feldzuge. Die Anstrengungen sind auch ihr zu Gute gekommen, welche ein

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Jahrhundert ausfüllen. . . . Die deutsche Wissenschaft hat ein Recht und eine Pflicht, ihre Sympathie laut und klangvoll bis über die Fluth auszusprechen. Denn ein Herz, das Wissen liebt, ist übervoll von Dank und vergisset nie. Die Wissenschaft trifft in diesem Interesse mit der grossen Politik zusammen. . . .45

Popular interest in the revolt can also be gauged by the surprisingly large number of popular novels as well as plays, poems, and even an opera about it that continued to appear over the next century. Two novels appeared more or less simultaneously during the course of the revolt, one anonymously published with the title Der Aufstand in Ostindien,46 the other authored by Hermann Goedsche, the second in his series of historical-political novels of contemporary times under the pseudonym Sir John Retcliffe.47 While the first novel fell into obscurity, Goedsche’s novel Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien in three volumes became a runaway best-seller, outstripping his earlier novel Sebastopol in popularity and becoming his best-known work. References to this novel can be found in the works of Ernst Bloch, Walter Benjamin, and Arno Schmidt. It also became a kind of template for the many fictional representations of the revolt that followed. The author further developed the form he had used in his first novel. The narrative is once again based on a conspiracy, that of representatives of various nations who join forces and set out to support the revolt in India to take revenge against Britain, their common enemy. We once again have a German doctor, Dr. Walding, as a main figure and as one of the conspirators. Unlike his predecessor Dr. Welland, who was already somewhat skeptical at the start about his sympathies for the revolutionaries of 1848, Dr. Walding begins by being passionately committed to the cause of the revolt. During the course of the novel, however, he is compelled to change his mind as he is repeatedly confronted with the lack of civilization of the Indian rebels and their leader, the eponymous Nena Sahib. This is demonstrated by irrational behavior, sexual perversity, and extreme violence, which on occasion fuse into utterly terrifying scenes and naturally lead to the defeat of the revolt. His European and Christian sensibilities deeply offended, Dr. Walding decides to return home. The novel is thus conceived as a Bildungsroman. As with all such examples of popular fiction, there could be readings in which the colonial question is not primary and the experience of adventure in an exotic culture takes the foreground. However, colonialism is undoubtedly central to the author’s conception.48 The German protagonist is bitterly critical of the British and their colonial policies, but they are shown to be essentially not equal to the task of bringing the fruits of civilization to India, since they view it as a commercial enterprise rather than a cultural project. The implication is that the Germans with their profound scholarship had a far deeper understanding of Indian

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culture and would therefore have carried out the task more adequately. They are specially equipped with what Anil Bhatti has called “colonial competence,” though they have no colonies in which they can put it to work.49 Of course, this “competence” was conceived as a characteristic feature of German identity, but it also articulates the desire for colonies that would be realized only some decades later. One could argue therefore that while concerns about German nationhood and identity were predominant, these concerns did not foreclose a latent aspiration for colonial possessions, especially given the fact that colonialism was such an integral aspect of European politics and culture at the time. In fact, as several historians have argued, colonial aspirations were linked to national identity. It is noteworthy in this context that these aspirations were often defined in terms of a German India (deutsches Indien). The demand for a German India remained a running theme right up to the Nazi regime; Hitler declared: “Der russische Raum ist unser Indien, und wie die Engländer es mit einer Handvoll Menschen beherrschen, so werden wir diesen Kolonialraum regieren.”50

IV. Conclusion The extraordinary space occupied by these three events in the Germanlanguage press and other publications can be explained in part by the censorship laws that imposed considerable restrictions on the nature and extent of public pronouncements with regard to domestic issues. In view of these restrictions, the focus was shifted to happenings elsewhere that could function as a detour for the expression of views about matters at home including inner-German and inner-European concerns. In the German context, the preoccupation with attaining nationhood and defining a German identity found its imprint in the reportage of such events. The clash of opinions, particularly between the liberal and conservative camps, though also from other more or less influential opinionmakers, reflected precisely these concerns. As seen in the Damascus affair, European and German Jews intervened publicly by appealing to the “civilized” European world and the educated and enlightened German readers portraying a still “barbaric” Orient that could benefit from European help. They did this probably for various reasons, but an overriding factor seems to have been the ambivalent signals sent out by the coverage in the mainstream German press and the anxieties that these signals evoked about the place of the Jews in a German nation-state. For its part, the mainstream press reflected an evident lack of resolve about the issue. The responses to the Crimean War show how politically divergent positions, both arguing in support of policies that they believed would benefit German nationhood, used orientalist dichotomies in support of their views, the one to underscore a pro-Western liberal

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position, the other to emphasize Christianity and conservative values. The responses to the Revolt in India particularly highlight the significance ascribed to happenings in the colonial world both for Europe as well as for the German nation. There would of course have been other views with regard to all three events that find no mention here, such as those of the radical democrats and socialists, since they were largely not represented in the media coverage, being either exiled or silenced by censorship laws, but also of others, including conservatives.51 Common to the responses outlined is first their appearance in print media with its access to a wider public and second the selective deployment of orientalist dichotomies to evoke a sense of community against a posited Orient, which though itself different in each case, could nevertheless evoke a sense of all that was associated with the various Orients. In other words, the Orient functioned as an adaptable ideological space to which (heterogeneous) characteristics could be attributed that were seen not (or not quite) to belong to a homogeneous German nation and identity. In his influential account of the rise of nationalism, Benedict Anderson attributes an important role to print capitalism in nineteenth-century Europe—the marketization of the newspaper and the novel in particular and their growing influence in creating a sense of national belonging in what he calls “homogeneous empty time” (time emptied of the present with its real-life conflicts, and experienced instead as it is depicted by clocks and calendars), using a phrase coined by Walter Benjamin (to denote the progressive notion of history that he set out to critique). Partha Chatterjee disagrees with Anderson’s recourse to homogeneous empty time: “People can only imagine themselves in empty homogeneous time; they do not live in it.”52 He emphasizes first that such time is the utopian time of capital rather than the lived experience of modern societies in which time is heterogeneous and unevenly dense—with discordant social and cultural phenomena being perceived as belonging to different times; and second that this heterogeneity is particularly marked in postcolonial societies: “these ‘other’ times are not mere survivals of a premodern past: they are new products of the encounter with modernity itself. One must therefore call it the heterogeneous time of modemity.”53 One may argue that heterogeneity, and conflicted heterogeneity at that, was an integral part of the experience of the modern age both in nineteenthcentury Europe and in colonial and postcolonial societies. The forces of nationalism, conflict ridden themselves, nevertheless had the common objective of creating a sense of homogeneous community. What distinguishes nineteenth-century European nationalism (though, as chapters in this volume show, this does not apply as readily to some central and east European nationalisms) is that it grew simultaneously with the conquest of the non-European world, as a result of which it could, as it were, expel out into that “other world” all that was perceived as heterogeneous or

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discordant with the newly homogenized national identities. By contrast, the option of excluding the heterogeneous was, in the main, not available to the nationalist movements that arose in the colonies. In European and German nationalist discourses, the term “Orient” (or “oriental”), among its many other uses, could also be deployed as a figuration of that which was seen as incongruent with European or German identity, all the more so since it could designate such widely different things.

Notes 1

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 2006), 46.

2

See Sabine Mangold, Eine “weltbürgerliche Wissenschaft”—Die deutsche Orientalistik im 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2004), 53. 3

Andrea Polaschegg, Der andere Orientalismus: Regeln deutsch-morgenländischer Imagination im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005), 276–77. 4

Such rights had been conferred on the consuls in various agreements concluded by individual European powers with the Sultan. 5

As regards Jews in the Ottoman Empire, it is worth mentioning that many had found refuge in the Turkish sultanate after their expulsion from Spain and Portugal in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. “Whereas the Jews in Europe, the heartland of civilization (as they, too, usually saw it), were still hemmed in, at least east of the Rhine, by a complex array of legal and social barriers, the Jews in Damascus enjoyed a large measure of acceptance as one among the major ethnoreligious groups that by tradition made up the city. They not only ran their own communal affairs but to a degree unimaginable in Europe, were involved in public administration and high politics.” Jonathan Frankel, The Damascus Affair: “Ritual Murder,” Politics, and the Jews in 1840 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 34–35. 6

The French involvement was also responsible for the escalation of the case in Damascus (ibid., 51). 7

See Kerstin von der Krone, “Die Berichterstattung zur Damaskus-Affäre in der deutsch-jüdischen Presse,” in Jewish Images in the Media, ed. Martin Liepach et al., Relation: Beiträge zur vergleichenden Kommunikationsforschung, N.F., Bd. 2 (Vienna: Austrian Academy of Sciences Press, 2007), 153–76. 8

Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums, ed. Leopold Phillipson, no. 17, 25 April 1840, 236 (hereafter AZJ). 9

AZJ, no. 18, 2 May 1840, 250.

10

Ibid., 251.

11

Cited in François Guesnet, “Strukturwandel im Gebrauch der Öffentlichkeit: Zu einem Aspekt jüdischer politischer Praxis zwischen 1744 und 1881,” in Europäische Öffentlichkeit: Transnationale Kommunikation seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, ed. Jörg Requate and Martin Schulze Wessel (Frankfurt am Main: Campus Verlag, 2002), 56.

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12

Der Orient: Berichte, Studien und Kritiken für jüdische Geschichte und Literatur, ed. Dr. Julius Fürst, no. 17, 25 April 1840, 126. 13

AZJ, no. 18, 2 May 1840, 251; and no. 20, 16 May 1840, 252; Der Orient, no. 23, 6 June 1840, 176.

14

See Henry Wassermann, “Preliminary Impressions and Observations concerning ‘Jewish’ Advertisements in the Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung in 1840,” in Integration und Ausgrenzung: Studien zur deutsch-jüdischen Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte von der Frühen Neuzeit bis zur Gegenwart, ed. Mark H. Gelber, Jakob Hessing, and Robert Jütte (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2009), 73. 15

Jonathan Frankel, “‘Ritual Murder’ in the Modern Era: The Damascus Affair of 1840,” Jewish Social Studies, New Series 3, no. 2 (1997): 10. 16

AJZ, no. 28, 11 July 1840, 402.

17

According to Prawer, the Damascus affair led Heine to go back to writing The Rabbi of Bacherach, a work started in 1820 that gives a fictional account of a ritual murder charge in fifteenth-century Germany. Siegbert Salomon Prawer, Heine’s Jewish Comedy: A Study of His Portraits of Jews and Judaism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 383–84. 18

Frankel, “‘Ritual Murder’ in the Modern Era,” 15.

19

Ibid., 4.

20

Heinrich Heine, Artikel aus Paris, 3. Juni 1840, in Sämtliche Werke: Bd. Lutezia: Kleinere Schriften (1840–1844) (Frankfurt am Main: Insel-Verlag, 1910), 65–74. 21

See Caspar Battegay, Das andere Blut: Gemeinschaft im deutsch-jüdischen Schreiben, 1830–1930, Jüdische Moderne 12 (Cologne: Böhlau Verlag, 2011), 96. 22

Dan Diner, “Die Wiederkehr der Orientalischen Frage,” Die Zeit, 1 September 1995, 36. 23 William Howard Russell, the first modern war correspondent, reported from the trenches for the Times of London during the Crimean War. Soon after this he also covered the Revolt in India. 24 Roger Fenton and James Robertson were both among the first photographers who also covered the Crimean war. 25 Hans-Christof Kraus, “Wahrnehmung und Deutung des Krimkrieges in Preußen—Zur innenpolitischen Rückwirkung eines internationalen Großkonflikts,” in Der Krimkrieg als erster europäischer Medienkrieg, ed. Georg Maag, Wolfram Pyta, and Martin Windisch (Berlin: LIT-Verlag, 2010), 235–56. 26 Jürgen Frölich, “Repression und Lenkung versus Pressefreiheit und Meinungsmarkt. Zur preußischen Pressegeschichte in der Reichsgründungszeit,” in Kommunikation und Medien in Preußen vom 16. bis zum 19. Jahrhundert, ed. Bernd Sösemann, Beiträge zur Kommunikationsgeschichte, vol. 12 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag 2002), 364–85. 27

Kraus, “Wahrnehmung und Deutung,” 236.

28

Jürgen Wilke, Grundzüge der Medien- und Kommunikationsgeschichte: Von den Anfängen bis ins 20. Jahrhundert (Cologne: C. H. Beck Verlag, 2000), 167–72.

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29

The more recent resurgence of the idea of a Christian Europe, particularly in the debate about whether Turkey should become a member of the European Union, shows how such ideas can be revived and deployed in completely different contexts. For a critique of this idea and its historical untenability, see in particular Ian Almond, Two Faiths, One Banner: When Muslims Marched with Christians across Europe’s Battlegrounds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009). I am grateful to James Hodkinson for this reference. 30

Susie K. Frank, “(Un)Sichtbarkeit und Darstellbarkeit des Krieges am Anfang des Medienzeitalters: Der Krimkrieg in der russischen Literatur vor dem Jintergrund der Innovationen in der Kriegsberichterstattung in den europäischen Pressemedien,” in Maag, Pyta, Windisch, Krimkrieg als erster europäischer Medienkrieg, 113. 31

Leopold von Ranke, “Zur orientalischen Frage: Gutachten im Juli 1854 Seiner Majestät König Friedrich Wilhelm IV: Vorgetragen,” Historische Zeitschreift, ed. Heinrich von Sybel, Bd. 13 (Munich 1865), 406–33. 32

Ibid., 427.

33

Ibid., 424.

34

Hermann Goedsche, Die Russen nach Constantinopel! Ein Beitrag zur orientalischen Frage (Berlin: Bieler, 1854). 35

Sir John Retcliffe, Sebastopol: Historisch-politischer Roman aus der Gegenwart, 4 vols. (Berlin: Carl Nöhring, 1855–57).

36 Theodor Fontane, Aufsätze, Kritiken, Erinnerungen, Band 4, Autobiographisches, ed. Walter Keitel (Munich: Hanser Verlag, 1973), 421. 37

Volker Neuhaus, Der zeitgeschichtliche Sensationsroman in Deutschland, 1855– 1878: “Sir John Retcliffe” und seine Schule (Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag, 1980), 124. 38

Polaschegg, Andere Orientalismus, 280.

39

See Shaswati Mazumdar, ed., Insurgent Sepoys: Europe Views the Revolt of 1857 (New Delhi: Routledge Books, 2011). 40

“England, Indien und Deutschland,” Kreuzzeitung, 8 October 1857.

41

“Die materielle und moralische Gefahr,” Volks-Zeitung, 1 August 1857.

42

“Englands Sieg auch der unsere,” Volks-Zeitung, 16 October 1857.

43

“Muselmännische Symptome,” Kreuzzeitung, 15 October 1857.

44

“Das Reich der Ost-Indischen Compagnie III,” Kreuzzeitung, 21 August 1857. 45

Paulus Cassel, Die Englander in Indien (Erfurt, 1857), 18. The author, a journalist, writer, and Christian theologian of Jewish origin, later became the secretary of the Academy of Sciences at Erfurt and also intervened actively against the increasing anti-Semitism toward the end of the nineteenth century. 46 Der Aufstand in Ostindien: Historisch-romantisches Gemälde aus der Gegenwart; Nach den besten Quellen und mit Benutzung der interessantesten wahren Ereignisse entworfen und ausgeführt, 2 vols., Romantische Volks-Bibliothek (Hamburg: J. F. Richter, 1858/59).

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47

Sir John Retcliffe, Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien: Historisch-politischer Roman aus der Gegenwart, Englische und deutsche Original-Ausgabe, 3 vols. (Berlin: Carl Nöhring, 1858/59). 48

See Anil Bhatti, “Retcliffe’s Nena Sahib and the German Colonial Discourse on India,” in Mazumdar, Insurgent Sepoys, 142. 49

Anil Bhatti, “Zum Verhältnis von Sprache, Übersetzung und Kolonialismus am Beispiel Indiens,” in Kulturelle Identität: Deutsch-indische Kulturkontakte in Literatur, Religion und Politik, ed. Horst Turk and Anil Bhatti (Berlin: Erich Schmidt, 1997), 5. 50

See Sebastian Conrad, Deutsche Kolonialgeschichte (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2008), 81, 103; Wolfgang Benz, ed., Vorurteil und Genozid: Ideologische Prämissen des Völkermords (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 2010), 22–24; Sven Oliver Müller and Cornelius Torp, eds., Das deutsche Kaiserreich in der Kontroverse (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht 2009), 326–27. 51

For references to dissenting voices in regard to the Revolt of 1857, see Mazumdar, Insurgent Sepoys, in particular the introduction (6) and the chapter by Claudia Reichel, “Theodor Fontane and Wilhelm Liebknecht on the Indian Rebellion of 1857–1858,” 19–41. 52

Partha Chatterjee, “Anderson’s Utopia,” diacritics 29, no. 4 (1999): 131.

53

Partha Chatterjee, “The Nation in Heterogeneous Time,” The Indian Economic and Social History Review 38, no. 4 (2001): 403.

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6: M. C. Sprengel’s Writings on India: A Disenchanted and Forgotten Orientalism of the Late Eighteenth Century Jon Keune

I

N 1786, A PROFESSOR at the University of Halle, Matthias Christian Sprengel, published a history of what was, at the time, the largest and most powerful Indian kingdom, about which few of his German readers had probably ever heard. Die Geschichte der Maratten bis auf den lezten Frieden mit England den 17. Mai 1782 contained nearly 250 pages of sober, statistic-filled narrative that Sprengel had stitched together from dozens of European sources.1 With this book, the deskbound German surprisingly became the first European to write a comprehensive history of the Maratha Empire, despite the advantages his colonial English, French, and Portuguese contemporaries had in obtaining firsthand information about India.2 Sprengel’s history of the Marathas and two other books that he wrote stood out among eighteenth-century European literature on India, as they were published in German rather than English or French. Sprengel’s nonpartisan tone and interest in contemporary politics did not fit the pattern of later German orientalist literature that emerged in the nineteenth century either. Sprengel’s work defies common characterizations of orientalist scholarship. His books do not assume a binary opposition of rational West versus irrational India.3 He says nothing about Aryan superiority, IndoEuropean racial connections, or linguistic affinities, and he does not indulge in “the fantasy of a uniquely religion-obsessed India.”4 His writing contains no “romance, exotic beings, haunting memories and landscapes, remarkable experiences,” and he does not perceive the Orient as the subject of artistic fantasies rather than an actual place.5 Sprengel wrote almost exclusively about current political, economic, and military affairs. Unlike German writers before and after him, Sprengel’s writings reveal neither an anxiety about Ottoman power nor fascination with Sanskrit language and literature.6 He surely was aware of Sanskrit, however; his brother-in-law was Georg Forster, whose translation of Kalidasa’s Shakuntala in 1791 (from William Jones’s English translation) made a Sanskrit text available to German readers for the first time.

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Research on German orientalism has tended to focus on its nineteenthand twentieth-century incarnations, which were taken with Sanskrit philology, theories of race, romantic aesthetics, and a quest for the origin of culture. Since Sprengel’s writings on India do not fit this mold, the few modern scholars who have taken note of his work have viewed it as an “anomaly”7 and a “rare exception.”8 This chapter takes a different view and argues that if Sprengel is understood properly in his intellectual and historical context, then he was not anomalous but rather representative of an alternative form of orientalism. Taking a cue from Jürgen Osterhammel and Max Weber, this chapter proposes that what Sprengel developed and deployed in his writings on India was a “disenchanted” (entzaubert) orientalism that sought to understand India in political and material terms.9 Some might question whether the term “orientalism” is taxonomically appropriate for Sprengel at all. Indeed, he rarely referred to the Orient or Morgenland, and he lived before typically orientalist fields like Indology were established at German universities. Osterhammel’s magisterial work on eighteenth-century European views of Asia puts Sprengel’s writings in a different light. Sprengel dwelt not in the romantic, nationalist ethos that characterizes the typical “German orientalism” of the nineteenth century but rather in the late Enlightenment, when Europeans were still discovering the world, before the balance of global power tipped in Europe’s favor. Major shifts in transoceanic naval power, semi-nationalized merchant networks, geographically precise knowledge, and European aspirations on the global stage marked this epochal transition.10 If German orientalism can be said to have developed only after that caesura and Sprengel (1745–1803) lived before it, then one might be inclined not to call him an orientalist per se but simply a late Enlightenment scholar who happened to write about India. This chapter intentionally retains the term “orientalism” as useful for Sprengel’s case. In doing so, I follow the leads of Osterhammel and, more recently, Urs App in recovering the worldviews of eighteenthcentury European observers of Asia.11 This allows us to view later, more ideological German orientalism as part of a wider historical canvas. A generic, broader definition of orientalism—which goes to say, any effort by Europeans to think about what lies to the east—allows forgotten perspectives such as Sprengel’s to come more into focus. The process by which Sprengel was excised from intellectual history was not passive and accidental. Sprengel’s concerns were out of sync with the research agendas and prejudices of later German orientalists, whose theories implicitly and explicitly reinforced their assumptions of cultural superiority or fascination with presumed otherness. Since Sprengel’s writings on India could not be recruited to support the more ideological orientalism that so many other nineteenth-century Germans sought to deploy, his disenchanted orientalism was abandoned.

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This chapter thus attempts to remedy the amnesia about Sprengel and his perceptions of India. The first section of the chapter offers a biographical sketch of this multifaceted, prolific scholar. Then I examine Sprengel’s writings on India as a discrete mode of orientalism with its own methodology and means of deployment. I conclude by suggesting some reasons for why Sprengel was forgotten and his orientalism was eclipsed by later German conceptions of India.

I. M. C. Sprengel’s Life and Writings Scholarship on Sprengel has been limited and mostly isolated from critical research on orientalism. A thesis published in 1902 offered the earliest major biography of the man.12 Six decades later, in response to inquiries from historians in India, Dietmar Rothermund wrote and published a lecture on Sprengel’s history of the Marathas.13 Two more recent essays highlight Sprengel’s relationships with eighteenth-century German colleagues, especially in Göttingen and Halle.14 Most recently, Gita Dharampal-Frick briefly discussed Sprengel in an article on German critiques of British colonialism.15 Unrelated to India, scholars have found Sprengel interesting in several other capacities that testify to the breadth of his interest and activity: as a historian of American history,16 as a translator of the American Declaration of Independence,17 as an early critic of the Atlantic slave trade,18 and as an author and translator of works on African history.19 Sprengel was born in Rostock in 1745 to a well-established family of merchants. Most of his student years were spent in Göttingen, which was one of the most progressive German universities at the time and home to several innovative scholars who developed the study of political formations (Statistik), global history (Weltgeschichte and Universal-Historie), and human diversity (Völkerkunde and Ethnologie).20 The wave of new information about the world that was surging into Europe functioned as a catalyst for working up theories of history, politics, and society. Sprengel studied under the political historian, August Schlözer, and his early publications reflect Schlözer’s interests in colonial activity. These writings on British colonies in the New World were based on publications in English, French, and other European languages.21 After the American Revolution in 1776, by which the United States of America ceased to be a British colony, Sprengel’s interest in British colonialism turned elsewhere, especially to India. In 1778, Sprengel became Professor of History and Statistik in Halle, where he remained for the rest of his life, teaching history, geography, and Statistik, and eventually overseeing the university library.22 His correspondence reveals that he found the work in Halle burdensome because of disorganization within the university, but he took

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great pleasure in his work as an author, editor, and translator.23 Shortly after Sprengel arrived in Halle, the extraordinarily well-traveled Johann Reinhold Forster joined the faculty as a professor of history. He and his precocious son Georg had become famous for publishing their records of the three-year voyage around the world with James Cook, whom they had accompanied as the expedition’s natural historians.24 After the voyage, the Forsters remained in London for several years, supporting themselves by editing and translating travel descriptions (Reisebeschreibungen). In Halle, Sprengel coedited a series of critically translated travel descriptions with Forster and married one of his daughters.25 The personal library that Forster brought from London,26 the travel descriptions that they translated together, and the acquisitions that Sprengel secured for the library made him remarkably well informed about current events outside Europe. Although Sprengel never traveled beyond his German-speaking homeland, in a sense the world came to him. Sprengel’s prolific career was cut short in 1803, when he died of pleurisy at the age of fifty-five.27 Sprengel, his wife, Johann Forster, and occasionally Georg Forster all cooperated in Halle to translate and comment on travel descriptions that had been published in other European languages. These critical translations appeared in three separate series that spanned thirty-six volumes and contained over one hundred documents, endowing Sprengel with a large pool of information that he drew on in order to write his own books. Most of Sprengel’s books dealt with British colonies and their legacies: the Falkland Islands and an overview of all the British colonies (both in 1776), the American Revolution (1777 and 1785), the Atlantic slave trade (1779), Europeans in North America (1782), and colonies in Sierra Leone (1796). Some books considered the activities of other European nations in Asia, such as Portuguese observations of geography in Japan (1792) and Dutch trade in Southeast Asia (1797). Still others compared the political structures of contemporary European nations (1791 and 1793) and offered overviews of recent European and global history (1783 and 1797). Sprengel was not occupied exclusively with India, although more of his books focused on India than on any other region. His first book on India was originally a lecture that he had prepared for a German duke in 1783, reporting on British activities in India and their implications for the balance of power in Europe.28 In 1786, Sprengel published his history of the Marathas, an Indian power that, at the time, was resisting British incursions into its territory. In 1801, he published a book on the Mysore sultanate—another kingdom that for a time had withstood British colonization.29 A brief review of each of these will enable us to identify the methodology of Sprengel’s disenchanted orientalism and the means by which it was deployed.

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Über den Krieg der Engländer in Ostindien (On the War of the British in India) Drawing mainly on English and French sources, Sprengel summarizes the East India Company’s military and commercial affairs in India, highlighting the extent of British power in Asia and reports of its unethical conduct. Sprengel frames the presentation in terms of a single, extended war rather than as many separate and scattered disputes. He notes that the British in India had made powerful enemies, although their names were mostly unknown in Europe (Über den Krieg, 4). Sprengel mainly describes the political landscape: the British presidencies of Calcutta, Madras, and Bombay, the subdued Mughal rulers, the still powerful Marathas and Mysore sultanate, and the various minor Indian and European forces whose allegiances changed frequently. Sprengel cites statistics from British economic reports, marveling at the value of goods coming out of India and highlighting British aspirations to dominate trade in the region. Sprengel mostly refrains from making judgments about this data, but in the middle of his lecture he condemns reports of British unscrupulousness, such as breaking treaties, paying subjugated Indian rulers smaller pensions than promised, and disregarding the wellbeing of common Indians (Über den Krieg, 26–30). Sprengel also complains about the dearth of information available about ongoing conflicts in India, suspecting that British sources had hidden (verbirgt) or concealed (verheimlicht) uncomplimentary data from the public record (32–33). After this short critical commentary, Sprengel returns to reporting on the extent of British control and ongoing resistance efforts mounted by the Marathas and the Mysore sultanate. Sprengel’s depiction of Indians in this lecture does not differ essentially from the way in which he describes European forces in India. On some points, however, his unfamiliarity with cultural details is obvious, such as when he confusingly attempts to explain the relative statuses of different names for Indian rulers (Über den Krieg, 36–37), and calls the Marathas a “caste” of vegetarian Brahman soldiers who subsist on rice and water alone (41).30 Such cultural essentializing is extremely rare in this lecture, however, and Sprengel otherwise shows little interest in culture or religion. He concludes by estimating the cost of the ongoing British conflicts in India, noting that the “war” in India had taken a significant toll. It was distracting Britain from checking other European powers’ influence in Asia (54), and the cost of campaigns was exceeding the East India Company’s income (57). Die Geschichte der Maratten bis auf den lezten Frieden mit England den 17. Mai 1782 The most popular of Sprengel’s books, Die Geschichte der Maratten, was first published in 1786 and reprinted in 1791.31 Apparently the reprinted

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edition met with limited commercial success, however, as unsold copies were later bought up by a different book-seller, rebound with a new front page, and resold again in 1814.32 Despite the appearance of multiple editions, the book’s content remained the same. Since the Marathas emerged in India as a unified kingdom only in the final quarter of the seventeenth century, they naturally lacked the name recognition of empires such as the Mughals.33 The British fought three major wars against the Marathas in the decades surrounding the turn of the eighteenth century. The first war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Salbai on May 17, 1782—the date included in the full title of Sprengel’s book. Sprengel felt that the terms of the 1782 treaty actually favored the Marathas, and the future balance of power was uncertain. Only twenty years later, at the very end of Sprengel’s life, would the British clearly gain the upper hand. Sprengel stated in the book’s preface that although the Marathas had become the most powerful among Indian kingdoms, their history remained unwritten (Geschichte der Maratten, 1786, iii). Despite uncertainties about his readers’ interest levels and his misgivings about fragmentary source materials, Sprengel attempted to write this history in “an efficient, nonpartisan, and critical way,” such that it would yield a “true gain for world history” (wahrer Gewinn für die Weltgeschichte, vii). He claims to have consulted every published document on the Marathas available in Europe (and his copious footnotes do much to support this), remarking on the challenge of integrating such diverse sources into a coherent narrative. The book is divided into three discernible but unmarked sections, corresponding to the three sets of sources that Sprengel used. His tone in each section is noticeably different.34 In the first forty pages, Sprengel cites thirty-four references—half of them in English and the others in French, German, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, and Latin. For most of his book, however, Sprengel consistently cites a narrower range of English texts. The book’s second and smoothest section deals with the first Maratha king, Shivaji, and relies greatly on the British historian, Robert Orme, whom Sprengel considered to be “the single and best guide for the history of the latest Indian changes” (143). The final and longest section of the book is more convoluted and disjointed, and Sprengel frequently complains that fragmentary sources hindered him from discerning a clear sequence of events. Sprengel evaluates frankly the reliability of his sources and usually refrains from offering moral lessons based on their content. He inundates his readers with statistics: territories’ annual incomes, sizes of armies, numbers of ships and cannons, distances between cities, numbers of horses, levels of taxation, costs of war campaigns, and so on. He pays close attention to shifting alliances among Indian and European armies, observing how various Maratha groups freely entered and broke alliances

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with French, Deccan Muslim, and British forces as it suited their purposes (Geschichte der Maratten, 1786, 77, 126). Throughout his narrative, Sprengel remains detached, rarely hinting at sympathies for one side or the other. Political terminology is central to Sprengel’s narration of Maratha history, although he offers little analysis of the politics he describes. At the very end of the book, Sprengel abruptly declares that by the time of the peace treaty, the British were the most fearsome, enterprising, and lawmaking (gesetzgebende) nation among the Indian powers, whereas the Marathas maintained a “tangled aristocratic constitution” (verwickelte aristokratische Verfassung) of twelve allied leaders (Geschichte der Maratten, 1786, 226). He does not elaborate further on this stark change in authorial tone, in which he seems to indicate that British forms of governance are more advanced than their Maratha counterparts, however. This is the final sentence of the book. Sprengel shows little interest in religion. He occasionally uses words that have religious connotations or implies that religion is the defining feature of particular groups, but he never explains what belonging to a specific tradition involves. In the few cases that Sprengel uses the word “Hindu,” it has a clearly geographic connotation rather than a religious one (Geschichte der Maratten, 1786, 3, 24, 79). Far more often than referring to Hindus, however, Sprengel prefers the terms “Marathas” and “Indians” (Indier). Sprengel employs the word “Moor” (Mohr) more frequently. In one passage, he makes the connection to religion explicit by glossing Moor as a “Muslim conqueror” (mohammetanischer Eroberer, 17). Sprengel also sometimes employs the word “Mughal” (Mogul or Mogol), but offers no explanation for how it differs from Moor. A discerning reader would notice that Sprengel mentions Mughals only when referring to rulers in Delhi, but he never makes this explicit. He may have been unaware of it himself. Sprengel also distinguishes among Arabs and Persians without calling them Moors (21, 29, 111, 215). In the text, the term “Moor” appears to name Muslim rulers and soldiers who belong to the Deccan sultanates. As with his use of the word “Hindu,” Sprengel never clarifies exactly what characterizes a Moor. Despite living in Halle, the center of the Lutheran Pietist movement and the headquarters for the oldest Protestant mission in India, Sprengel makes only one passing reference to the presence of missionaries in Tanjore, and he cites the Hallische Missionsberichte only twice (Geschichte der Maratten, 1786, 73, 76). In light of the wealth of information that the Danish Halle Mission was collecting from its missionaries in south India, that Sprengel mostly ignores them (or effectively conceals his indebtedness to them) must have been deliberate, as if he were maintaining his distance from this group.

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There is one major exception to Sprengel’s otherwise relative disinterest in religious matters: a two-page elegy on the death of the first Maratha king, Shivaji. Sprengel lauds Shivaji for uniting diverse groups of bandits and stirring up in them religious zeal (Religionseifer) by his courageous example, which he claims distinguished Shivaji as among the greatest commanders of his time (Geschichte der Maratten, 1786, 80). Shivaji observed the ceremonies and worship (Andacht) that the Indian religion prescribes (die indische Religion vorschreibe), such as revering Brahmins and appointing them to high positions. Sprengel calls Shivaji “the protector of the Indian religion and the eager avenger of its gods and temples” that had been desecrated by Aurangzeb (die Schutzwehr der indischen Religion, und der glükliche Rächer ihrer Götter und Pagoden, 81). The impassioned elegy ends as suddenly as it began, and Sprengel returns to his dry narrative style. These two pages, which heap praise on Shivaji and view religion as a vital force for motivating troops, differ radically from the rest of the text. These are not actually Sprengel’s words, however; he copied them from Robert Orme, sometimes practically verbatim.35 The sentiments expressed on these pages are so conspicuously out of character from the rest of the book that one wonders why Sprengel included them. He clearly did not endorse all of Orme’s opinions, since he omitted an entire chapter in which Orme discussed the “effeminacy” of Indian men. Hyder Aly und Tippo Saheb Sprengel’s second book on India, published in 1801, discusses the Mysore sultanate. Sprengel drew information from several sources but especially Maistre de la Tour’s Histoire d’Ayder-Ali-Chan, which he had translated into German some years earlier.36 Following the course set by his sources, Sprengel’s book focused on the two major rulers of the Mysore sultanate, Haidar Ali (r. 1761–82) and his son, Tipu Sultan (r. 1782–99). The neutral and cautious tone that one finds in Die Geschichte der Maratten continues for the most part in this book, with a few notable differences. Instead of referring to Moors, Sprengel consistently uses the term “Muslim” (Mahomedan, spelled very inconsistently). He sometimes calls the entire Mysore kingdom Muslim, despite regularly mentioning the presence of many Hindus within it (Hyder Aly und Tippo Saheb, v, 4, 6). Occasionally, the term conveys an explicitly religious sense, such as when he describes Tipu’s routine of personally interviewing applicants for his army. “If they possessed limited or no knowledge of religion at all, then he gave them over to the highest judge to be instructed in the mahomedan faith.”37 The accounts of Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan in this book are noticeably more violent and morally ambivalent than those in his history of the Marathas. This leaves the reader with multiple, conflicting impressions

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about the men. For example, Haidar Ali is said to have brought peace to his kingdom by driving out bandits, welcoming artisans and craftsmen, developing trade networks, and creating prosperity (Hyder Aly und Tippo Saheb, 13–14). Yet he also took gruesome vengeance (grausame Rache) on a community of Brahmans who were accused of killing Arab traders on the Malabar coast (18). This juxtaposition is even starker with Tipu Sultan. Sprengel says Tipu repelled British and Dutch forces from his kingdom and made it so prosperous that his Hindu subjects were content with his rule (29–30). Yet he also narrates Tipu forcing some defeated Brahmans to eat beef and be circumcised, burning Christian churches to the ground, and urging the Sultan of Kandahar in 1796 to wage a holy war (heiliger Krieg) to force heathens and unbelievers (Heiden und Ungläubige) to convert to Islam (20, 33, 50). Religious zeal is portrayed as an important motivation in these Muslim rulers’ lives. At the same time, sections of the book display remarkably diverse tones, concerns, and value judgments, so much so that it appears that Sprengel cobbled together as much material as possible in order to make an otherwise short book longer. In doing so, he notably repeats older tropes about fickle and fanatic Muslim despots. Compared to his history of the Marathas, Sprengel does relatively little to edit impassioned views from his sources; when it comes to Muslims, perhaps he believed them himself. Although the book focuses on the lives of two rulers, Sprengel’s more general concerns about competition between the British and French for mercantile and military control are never far away. Sprengel highlights politically expedient alliances, such as Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan maintaining close contact with French diplomats and hiring French mercenaries. A letter found in Tipu’s archive directly appealed to the French government to ally itself with Tipu and drive the British out of India (Hyder Aly und Tippo Saheb, 53). Although the setting of the events in this book was foreign to Sprengel’s German readers, many of the European parties involved and the political consequences of their struggles certainly were not. Current affairs in India were relevant to European politics. The three books that Sprengel wrote on India were possible only by his involvement in another major literary enterprise—collecting, translating, and critically editing travel literature and texts on global affairs. Sometimes it is practically impossible to discern the extent to which Sprengel was merely translating and editing versus contributing new material as an author. A good example of this is Erdbeschreibung von Ostindien, nemlich Hindostan und Dekan, published in 1802. This volume belonged to the immense Erdbeschreibung series that was initiated in 1754 by Anton Friedrich Büsching (who also studied at Göttingen, slightly before Sprengel), with the aim of reviewing the entirety of global geography known in Europe at the time. Büsching published eleven huge volumes in this series but died before completing the twelfth. Sprengel

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acquired the manuscript, edited or supplemented it in some capacity, and published it as an edition that explicitly prepared or finished (ausgearbeitet) what Büsching had begun.38 The structure of this 644-page text differs strikingly from Sprengel’s other books, and it speculates about ancient Indian history far more than Sprengel was wont to do elsewhere. At the same time, the numerous citations of books published after Büsching’s death reveal that Sprengel’s contribution as an editor was substantial. Clearly Sprengel’s writings on India do not fit the mold of ideological orientalism as discussed by Said and others, nor its peculiar nineteenthcentury German manifestation. His books are not, for the most part, pervaded by fears, disgusts, or fascinations that impelled him to inscribe his biases onto the Indian subjects that he represents. His works are not objective and free of bias either, particularly in relation to Muslims, despite his own efforts (many of which were successful) to edit out conspicuous distortions in his sources. Viewing his writings on India as a form of orientalism can be illuminating analytically because it holds Sprengel together with the very different German orientalists who came after him, thereby raising the question of how these differences in method and perspective arose.

II. Sprengel’s Disenchanted Orientalism: Mode, Aims, and Deployment Jürgen Osterhammel contends that eighteenth-century views of Asia were disenchanted (entzaubert), in the sense that Europeans perceived Asia not as a mythic cradle of religion and culture, but as a place of distant neighbors (entfernten Nachbarn) with whom they could carry on a dialogue relatively unburdened by ideology about ethnological difference. In the first decades of the nineteenth century, however, this more open attitude was subsumed by a “reenchantment” (Wiederverzauberung) of Asia, which coincided with the rise in Europe of race theory and romantic sentimentality.39 In light of this epochal difference, it makes perfect sense that Sprengel’s orientalism differed from that of his successors. But how may we characterize Sprengel’s disenchanted orientalism on its own terms? I propose four main elements. First, Sprengel’s disenchanted orientalism was not isolated from observations about the larger world. As we can see in the books he authored, edited, and translated, Sprengel kept track of developments in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia, and North Africa, as well as in India. His orientalism did not view India and its inhabitants as essentially different from other regions and peoples but as subject to common political, economic, and military principles. Second, Sprengel’s concern about India focused especially on politics, state formations, and global political affairs. Much of Sprengel’s

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academic career was intertwined with the emerging discipline of Statistik, which was pursued more intensively at his alma mater Göttingen than at any other German university.40 Unlike its apparent English cognate “statistics,” Statistik dealt with the “ordered presentation of the life of the state” (Staat), which encompassed the study of government, administration, population, economics, religion, and military affairs.41 Sprengel’s books took special interest in the role of new colonies, particularly when they developed forms of government that asserted independence from the colonizer. When it came to writing about Statistik, Sprengel’s real strength was in data collection and compilation, and not in innovating new theories. A more theoretically savvy author would have concluded Die Geschichte der Maratten with a more incisive comparison of British and Maratha governance than Sprengel did with his single sentence. So although Statistik is an important aspect of Sprengel’s orientalism, it was not the driving force that impelled his scholarship and writing. Third, Sprengel’s interest in contemporary global history was shaped deeply by the developing field of Weltgeschichte or Universal-Historie, which also was quite popular in Göttingen.42 Sprengel’s Doktorvater, August Schlözer, was one of the innovators in this field. Schlözer’s book on global history attempted to include all regions, periods, and peoples (Völker) of the world within the scope of a single, general history, culminating in a comprehensive view of how past events had conditioned the present state of the world.43 Based on the materials available to him in the early 1770s, he included sections on the Syrians, Arabs, Turks, Moghuls, and Chinese, each of which was treated as a separate group but subject to the same universal principles and tendencies based on their common humanity.44 Sprengel’s books on India exemplify this approach. In terms of Weltgeschichte too, Sprengel excelled at critically compiling scattered information more than at illuminating it with his own reflections and insights. Fourth, although Sprengel did not theorize explicitly about human diversity in his writings, his work was nonetheless tied to developments in a fledgling field (Völkerkunde and Ethnologie) that eventually became anthropology. Schlözer was a leader here as well.45 Schlözer promoted a definition of peoples (Völker) that was based on how they organized themselves into discreet groups rather than essential characteristics that they all supposedly shared. This political definition of Volk was central to Schlözer’s analysis of world history.46 This definition clashed with popular race-based theories of social identification that were promoted by scholars such as Schlözer’s colleague at Göttingen, Christoph Meiners. A more outspoken critic was Johann Gottfried Herder, who called Schlözer’s theory ugly and difficult,47 in comparison to his idea of a Volk as a subtle, organic core that all members supposedly share. Perhaps more influentially, Kant, in his writings and lectures on anthropology, completely ignored Schlözer.48 In contrast, Sprengel incorporated Schlözer’s political

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definition of Volk into his own work. This may offer an insight into why Sprengel was forgotten by later German orientalists. It is also important to recognize the means by which Sprengel spread his disenchanted orientalism. As a university professor who lectured regularly, Sprengel must have reached a sizable audience over the course of his two decades of teaching. Yet despite his and Johann Forster’s presence there, Halle at the time does not seem to have been a major center for historical or global studies, and neither Sprengel nor his main biographer mentions any students who dissertated under him or carried on his legacy. Sprengel’s life as a public intellectual outside the walls of the university brought him greater acclaim and a larger audience. Throughout his adult life, he was very active in translating travel descriptions into German. Georg Forster was even more engaged in this enterprise, which was extremely popular and widespread throughout Europe at the time.49 In the process of translating these texts, translators routinely added their own critical introductions and comments. Especially for German readers, this genre, which Osterhammel calls “enhanced translations” (verbessernde Übersetzungen), was a vital source of information about the world.50 As we saw with Sprengel’s role in revising Büsching’s Erdbeschreibung manuscript, the line between author and editor was difficult to discern. An even more extreme case of enhanced translation is Georg Forster’s rendering of an English book on birds in Southeast Asia. Forster expanded the text so extensively that the original author (a prominent British zoologist) chose to forego writing a second edition himself and instead had Forster’s German edition translated back into English.51 The genre had its fierce critics, however, as is evidenced by a heated dispute between Forster and Immanuel Kant over the ability of travelers to comprehend what they perceive while abroad.52 The Reisebeschreibung genre was good business, and the second half of the eighteenth century saw a boom in the production and sale of this literature.53 Sprengel edited over half of the fourteen volumes in one series of translated travelogues,54 produced another fourteen-volume series himself,55 and published eight volumes in yet another series before his death.56 That series continued after Sprengel’s death; his successor published forty-two additional volumes until he too died. Excited by the popularity of that series, the publisher instituted yet another series, which ran to sixty-five volumes.57 Enhanced translations were obviously popular and widely read, and Sprengel was one of the pioneers of the genre in the German-speaking territories. Thus, more than through his work as a university lecturer, Sprengel disseminated his form of orientalism by means of enhanced translations and independent books on India. It is difficult to fully assess the size of the audience that Sprengel’s disenchanted view of India reached, since the styles and genres in which he wrote spanned across scholarly and popular

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readerships. Whatever the influence of Sprengel’s impressive literary output may have been, however, he was soon forgotten, and his disenchanted view of India soon disappeared from German scholarship as well.

III. Conclusion: An Orientalism Forgotten Reflecting on the total disappearance of a legacy such as Sprengel’s is a sobering task, especially since there are no glaring or offensive flaws in his work to merit their occlusion from German memory. Quite the contrary, looking back now at Sprengel’s eighteenth-century work, aware of the cultural prejudice and racial ideology that drove much of German orientalism in the subsequent century and a half, one may even wonder that if Sprengel’s legacy had been greater, then German cultural and intellectual history could have been nudged, however slightly, onto a different course. As Osterhammel has suggested, because of the ongoing shift of global power away from Europe and North America in the twentyfirst century, disenchanted perspectives from the eighteenth century have become uncannily familiar.58 Thus there is a peculiar timeliness in reflecting now on what precluded Sprengel’s work from being remembered by later German orientalists. An inherent danger in repor ting on current events, as Sprengel did, is that by the time one publishes a book about them, they are no longer truly current. Thus, because of the nature of Sprengel’s writings on “contemporary” India, his books were destined to be of limited long-term interest. This was compounded by the fact that Sprengel lived in such interesting times, amid so many momentous changes in both Europe and Asia. Because of the political and intellectual shockwaves that the French Revolution sent across Europe and the British establishing control over most of India in the early nineteenth century, Sprengel’s work on the political state of affairs in contemporary India became obsolete very quickly. The manner in which his book on the Marathas was republished demonstrates this problem as well. As Rothermund noted, a bookseller bought up unsold copies of the book’s second (1791) printing, inserted a new front page, and put them on sale again in 1814. Rothermund neglected to mention a small but important change, however. The new bookseller altered the title. The two early editions of the book were entitled Die Geschichte der Maratten bis auf den letzten Frieden mit England den 17. Mai 1782, but the title of the 1814 rerelease strategically omitted the 1782 date. This conveniently suppressed the troublesome fact that by 1814, the latest peace treaty with the British was no longer 1782. Another treaty had been signed in 1803, at the conclusion of the Second Anglo-Maratha War, which took place after Sprengel wrote his book. This minor revision concealed a major problem; the book’s original title would have revealed that it had become outdated.

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A second reason for Sprengel’s disappearance from German memory relates to changes in academic politics and disciplines. At the end of the eighteenth century, Schlözer and others at Göttingen were engaged in writing world history, a historiographical paradigm that Sprengel followed. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, growing nationalist sentiment increased demand for histories of the German Volk that could bolster the image of a venerable German nation.59 World history, including the study of contemporary India, consequently fell out of fashion, whereas the study of ancient India and a common Aryan heritage (supported by apparently value-neutral linguistic research) held greater appeal for nationalist agendas. The changing political and economic demands in the first quarter of the nineteenth century also caused the field of Statistik to disappear from German curricula,60 while the study of Sanskrit and Indology grew rapidly. These academic changes parallel what Osterhammel describes as the “reenchantment” of Asia in the nineteenth century, in which Europeans became fascinated with the mystery and magnificence of an imagined ancient India. Sprengel’s books had little to offer in this respect. Another possible reason for Sprengel’s omission from German orientalist history is explicitly political, in the wake of the French Revolution. Following the revolution, Georg Forster threw his active support behind the Jacobin breakaway Republic of Mainz, which aimed to become the first German democratic state. This, along with incursions by Napoleon into German territories, resulted in Forster being labeled a traitor and banished from German memory for two centuries.61 Linked to Georg Forster through bonds of family, work, and friendship, Sprengel’s reputation may have suffered as well.62 Finally, there may be a more philosophical reason for Sprengel’s negligible legacy, which relates to how nineteenth-century German orientalists selectively inherited and ignored the work of their predecessors. As mentioned above, Schlözer defined the concept of Volk in terms of political organization rather than features that were supposed to be naturally inherent in human groups, as Herder had argued. Sprengel’s writings implicitly but clearly followed Schlözer. The political definition of Volk was a foundational concept for Sprengel’s and Schlözer’s interest in world history and state formations, orienting them to pay close attention to social realities in the contemporary world. In contrast, Kant and Herder, professor and student, respectively, in Königsberg, promoted a more idealist and theoretical approach to the study of humanity. Herder argued with Schlözer about how to define Volk, and Kant publicly denounced the popular travel descriptions genre that Sprengel and Forster took so seriously. It may be too speculative to imagine a fundamental division between Göttingen and Königsberg as competing “schools” of ethnological thought that undergirded different styles of orientalism. Yet it is surely

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more than mere coincidence that Kant’s and Herder’s philosophical theories about culture were prized by many nineteenth-century German orientalists, while the more politically and empirically oriented projects of Schlözer and Sprengel were abandoned. This chapter has attempted to counteract the amnesia about an important piece of eighteenth-century German intellectual history and wrest from obscurity a forgotten German scholar’s writings on India. By identifying the disenchanted orientalism of Matthias Christian Sprengel in his writings on India, this chapter reveals that there existed a striking alternative to the romantic, nationalistic orientalism that dominated later German scholarship on India. In other words, the later German orientalism was based on a choice to inherit one theory of culture and history over another—a choice that had profound effects on how Germans in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries came to understand India and themselves.

Notes I am grateful to Shaswati Mazumdar, Rosalind O’Hanlon, Anil Bhatti, and Camden House’s two reviewers for feedback on drafts of this chapter, to Hanne Mode for corresponding about her research on Sprengel, and to Stefan Tetzlaff for helping interpret unclear German passages. 1

Matthias Christian Sprengel, Geschichte der Maratten bis auf den letzten Frieden mit England den 17. Mai 1782 (Halle: Johann Jacob Gebauer, 1786), 33. Strangely, two authors claim that the book was published in 1785, but I have seen no evidence of this. Bruno Felix Hänsch, Matthias Christian Sprengel, ein geographischer Publizist am Ausgange des 18. Jahrhunderts (Halle: Buchdruckerei des Waisenhauses, 1902), 27; Dietmar Rothermund, “Matthias Christian Sprengel: German Historian of the Marathas,” in The German Intellectual Quest for India (Delhi: Manohar, 1986), 25. 2

Rothermund, “Matthias Christian Sprengel,” 31.

3

Ronald Inden, Imagining India (Bloomington: University of Indiana Press, 2004), 4–5. 4

Sheldon Pollock, “Deep Orientalism? Notes on Sanskrit and Power Beyond the Raj,” in Orientalism and the Postcolonial Predicament, ed. Carol Breckenridge and Peter van der Veer (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 81. 5

Edward Said, Orientalism, 3rd ed. (New York: Penguin, 2003), 1, 19.

6

Jennifer Jenkins, “German Orientalism: An Introduction,” Comparative Studies in South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East 24 (2004): 98. 7

Gita Dharampal-Frick, “Castigating Company Raj: Georg Forster and Matthias Christian Sprengel on British Colonialism (1781–1802),” in Barrieren und Zugänge: Die Geschichte der europäischen Expansion, ed. Thomas Beck, et al. (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2004), 195. 8

Chen Tzoref-Ashkenazi, “India and the Identity of Europe: The Case of Friedrich Schlegel,” Journal of the History of Ideas 67 (2006): 716.

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9

Jürgen Osterhammel, Die Entzauberung Asiens: Europa und die asiatischen Reiche im 18. Jahrhundert (Munich: C. H. Beck, 2010). 10

Ibid., 35.

11

Urs App, The Birth of Orientalism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010). 12 Hänsch, Matthias Christian Sprengel. An earlier, much briefer biographical sketch is Friedrich Ratzel, “Sprengel, Matthias Christian,” in Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1893), 299–300. 13

Rothermund, “Matthias Christian Sprengel.” A prominent Maharashtrian historian drew extensively on Rothermund’s published lecture. A. R. Kulkarni, Maratha Historiography (Delhi: Manohar, 2006), 27–33; A. R. Kulkarni, Marathyance Itihaskar [in Marathi] (Pune: Diamond, 2007), 35. 14

S. Kirschke and Hanne Mode, “Persönlichkeiten unserer Stadtgeschichte: Matthias Christian Sprengel, 1745–1803,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der Stadt Rostock, Neue Folge, ed. Hans-Werner Bohl (Rostock: Stadtarchiv Rostock, 1987): 34–50; Hanne Mode, “Historische Betrachtungen deutscher Gelehrter über Indien— Matthias Christian Sprengel (1745–1803),” in Aufklärung und Erneuerung: Beiträge zur Geschichte der Universität Halle im ersten Jahrhundert ihres Bestehens (1694–1806), ed. Günter Jerouschek and Arne Sames (Halle: Verlag Werner Dausien, 1994), 300–309. 15

Dharampal-Frick, “Castigating Company Raj,” 204–5.

16

Eugene Edgar Doll, “American History as Interpreted by German Historians from 1770 to 1815,” Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series 38 (1948): 436–64. 17

Willi Paul Adams, “German Translations of the American Declaration of Independence,” The Journal of American History 85 (1999): 1325–49; Elisa P. Douglass, “German Intellectuals and the American Revolution,” William and Mary Quarterly, Third Series 17 (1960): 200–218. 18

Stephan Palmié, “Slave Culture and the Culture of Slavery in North America: A Few Recent Monographs,” in Slavery in the Americas, ed. Wolfgang Binder (Würzburg: Verlag Könighausen & Neumann, 1993), 22–55. 19

Adam Jones, “Still Underused: Written German Sources for West Africa before 1884,” History in Africa 13 (1986): 225–44. 20

Anne Saada, “Die Universität Göttingen: Traditionen und Innovationen gelehrter Praktiken,” in Die Wissenschaft vom Menschen in Göttingen um 1800, ed. Hans Erich Bödecker, Philippe Büttgen, and Michel Espagne (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008), 23–46. 21

Matthias Christian Sprengel, Briefe den gegenwärtigen Zustand von NordAmerika betreffend (Göttingen: Dieterich, 1777); Matthias Christian Sprengel, Geschichte der Falklands-inseln (Leipzig: Weygand, 1776); Matthias Christian Sprengel, Kurze Schilderung der Grosbritannischen Kolonien in Nord-Amerika (Göttingen: Johann Christian Dieterich, 1777). 22

Hänsch, Matthias Christian Sprengel, 16.

23

Ibid., 18–20.

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Osterhammel, Entzauberung Asiens, 194.

25

Beiträge zu Völker- und Länderkunde, published in Leipzig in 14 volumes, 1781–90.

26

Hänsch, Matthias Christian Sprengel, 21.

27

Ibid., 32–34.

28

Matthias Christian Sprengel, Über den Krieg der Engländer in Ostindien (Halle: Johann Jacob Gebauer, 1783).

29

Matthias Christian Sprengel, Hyder Aly und Tippo Saheb, oder historisch-geographische Uebersicht des Mysorischen Reichs nebst dessen Entstehung und Zertheilung (Weimar: Industrie Comptoir, 1801). 30

“Maratha” technically denotes an amalgamation of noble warrior households that have traditional claims to ksatriya status and a vast corps of shudra peasants who fought seasonally for these noble leaders, which include the first Maratha king, Shivaji Bhosle, and his descendants. In the early eighteenth century, however, the Brahman minister (peshwa) Balaji Viswanath wrested control of the kingdom from the ksatriya rulers. Subsequently, the Maratha Empire was ruled de facto by Brahman ministers. 31

Matthias Christian Sprengel, Geschichte der Maratten bis auf den letzten Frieden mit England den 17. Mai 1782 (Frankenthal: Gegel, 1791). 32

Matthias Christian Sprengel, Geschichte der Maratten bis auf den letzten Frieden mit England (Frankenthal: Gegel/Loeffler, 1814). Rothermund, “Matthias Christian Sprengel,” 25. 33

For the most thorough modern history of the Marathas, see Stewart Gordon, The Marathas: 1600–1818 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 34

Rothermund highlights the difference in tone between Sprengel and his sources (“Matthias Christian Sprengel,” 26–29). 35

Robert Orme, Historical Fragments of the Mogul Empire: Of the Morattoes, and of the English Concerns in Indostan (London: F. Wingrave, 1782), 90–91. Although Sprengel is usually cautious about citation and precision elsewhere, in this case he overlooks a significant detail in Orme’s text. The idea that Shivaji is a guardian of Indian religion and avenger of desecrated gods is not Orme’s; rather, Orme states that those are the words of Shivaji “as he styled himself” in correspondence with Aurangzeb. 36 Matthias Christian Sprengel, Leben Hyder Allys, Nabobs von Mysore, 2 vols. (Halle: Gebauer, 1784–86). 37

“wenn sie geringe oder gar keine Religionskenntnisse besaßen, so übergab er sie dem obersten Richter, um sie im mahomedanischen Glauben zu unterweisen,” in Matthias Christian Sprengel, Hyder Aly und Tippo Saheb, 76. 38

Anton Friedrich Büsching, Erdbeschreibung von Ostindien nemlich Hindostan und Dekan (Hamburg: Carl Erst Sohn, 1802), front page. 39

Osterhammel, Entzauberung Asiens, 12.

40

Guillaume Garner, “Politische Ökonomie und Statistik an der Universität Göttingen (1760–1820),” in Bödecker, Büttgen, and Espagne, Wissenschaft vom Menschen in Göttingen um 1800, 371.

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Doll, “American History,” 436.

42

Martin Gierl, “Christoph Meiners, Geschichte der Menschheit und Göttingen Universalgeschichte: Rasse und Nation als Politisierung der deutschen Aufklärung,” in Bödecker, Büttgen, and Espagne, Wissenschaft vom Menschen in Göttingen um 1800, 419–33; Gérard Laudin, “Gatterer und Schlözer: Geschichte als ‘Wissenschaft vom Menschen’?,” in Bödecker, Büttgen, and Espagne, Wissenschaft vom Menschen in Göttingen um 1800, 394–418. 43

August Ludwig Schlözer, August Ludwig Schlözers Vorstellung seiner UniversalHistorie (Göttingen und Gotha: Johann Christian Dieterich, 1772), 3. 44

Martin Peters, Altes Reich und Europa: Der Historiker, Statistiker und Publizist August Ludwig (v.) Schlözer (1735–1809) (Munich: LIT Verlag, 2000), 187. 45

Han F. Vermeulen, “Göttingen und die Völkerkunde: Ethnologie und Ethnographie in der deutschen Aufklärung, 1710–1815,” in Bödecker, Büttgen, and Espagne, Wissenschaft vom Menschen in Göttingen um 1800, 202. 46

Ibid., 220.

47

Han F. Vermeulen, “The German Invention of Völkerkunde: Ethnological Discourse in Europe and Asia, 1740–1798,” in The German Invention of Race, ed. Sara Eigen and Mark Larrimore (Albany: SUNY Press, 2006), 134. 48

Ibid., 136.

49

Osterhammel, Entzauberung Asiens, 191.

50

Ibid., 192.

51

Ibid., 194.

52

Chen Tzoref-Ashkenazi, “The Experienced Traveller as a Professional Author: Friedrich Ludwig Langstedt, Georg Forster, and Colonialism Discourse in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” History 95 (2010): 4. 53

Ibid., 3.

54

Beiträge zur Völker- und Länderkunde (1781–1790).

55

Auswahl der besten ausländischen geographischen und statistischen Nachrichten zur Aufklärung der Völker- und Länderkunde (1794–1800). 56

Bibliothek der neuesten und wichtigsten Reisebeschreibungen (1800–1803).

57

Neue Bibliothek der wichtigsten Reisebeschreibungen (1815–1835).

58

Osterhammel, Entzauberung Asiens, 414.

59

Michael Maurer, “Historiographie und historisches Denken,” in Die Wende von Aufklärung zur Romantik, 1760–1820: Epoche im Überblick, ed. Horst Albert Glaser and György M. Vajda (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2001), 365–66. 60

Garner, “Politische Ökonomie und Statistik,” 371.

61

Dharampal-Frick, “Castigating Company Raj,” 195.

62

Hänsch, Matthias Christian Sprengel, 32.

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7: Occident and Orient in Narratives of Exile: The Case of Willy Haas’s Indian Exile Writings Jyoti Sabharwal

A

GERMAN-SPEAKING exiles who made India their “exile homeland” (1933–45) to escape persecution from the Nazi regime in Europe was Willy Haas (1891–1973), a Prague-born Germanophone of Jewish origin, and writer, critic, and publisher of the most widely read Weimar literary journal Die literarische Welt.1 Haas scripted some of the most successful films of the 1940s for the Bhavnani Studios in Bombay,2 published an anthology entitled Germans beyond Germany,3 and a series of essays on Indian culture and mythology that were published in India and in Germany.4 While locating Haas’s writings within twentieth-century German discourses on India, this chapter attempts to show how the comparative frameworks of the narrative in his texts, the influences of German Indology and his specific location of exile in the Orient, merge to circumscribe the hegemonic position of the Occident vis-à-vis the Orient. The virtual nonreception of Haas’s Indian texts, within his literary corpus and the genre of German exile literature more generally, needs to be brought to light, as this indicates the need for a closer discussion of non-occidental sites of exile in German exile studies. This becomes all the more relevant since exile texts produced by Willy Haas in India tend to transcend the dominant orientalist tropes. Thus, the discussion will engage with the typologies, demarcations, and perceptions of the Orient and the Occident within Haas’s work, on the basis of a microstudy of his exile in India during the rule of the National Socialists in Germany. It should be stressed at the outset that Haas’s writings were impacted by the romantic tradition of German orientalist discourse prevalent at the time he lived and are outside the theoretical ambit of Saidian orientalism. At the outset it is important to underline that Haas’s writings were impacted by the romantic tradition of German orientalist discourse. According to Said, this notion of “the ‘good’ Orient was invariably a classical period located somewhere in a long-gone India, whereas the ‘bad’ Orient lingered in present-day Asia, parts of North Africa, and in the Islamic everywhere.”5 MONG THE

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This chapter will highlight the relevant positions in exile studies pertaining to the complex relationship between exile, exile writing, and the location of exile,6 which in the case of Willy Haas was India in the midst of a groundbreaking freedom movement aimed at independence from British colonial rule. It will explore how Haas, by applying a comparative framework in the narrative of his India texts, steered free from the stereotypical representation of the Orient and the oriental.7 It will therefore be necessary to engage with the extant debates within exile studies on nomenclature, periodization, and narratological modes, and to focus on the experience of exile outside the nebulous borders of the Occident. As a metaphor, the word “exile” evokes a condition inseparable from the act of writing. In fact the French literary critic and academic Julia Kristeva considers exile as a state of being, necessary to be able to write.8 Yet, historically, political exile has been the biggest cause of displacement, homelessness, and misery in the last century.9 In the wake of fascism in Europe, the first half of the twentieth century saw the largest number of people pushed into exile in the history of Europe.10 It was surpassed in magnitude only by the displacement of people during the partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan in 1947.11 Both led to the creation of a literary corpus signified as “partition literature” in the South Asian subcontinent and as “exile literature” in German-speaking Europe.

I. Exile Literature in Postwar Germany German exile literature, which emerged as a subject area in postwar Germany, is marked by diverse debates regarding nomenclature and periodization. The use of the terms “German emigration” or “German exile” to describe those people who left or were forced to leave Germany after the Fascists came to power has been questioned by Hans-Albert Walter, the pioneer of German exile literature. He points out that the use of these terms presupposes a uniformity and homogeneity that did not exist either culturally, socially, or politically among the exiles. Even if subtle differences are overlooked, it is difficult not to take note of the large-scale mass migration of Jewish people as a result of the racist policies of fascism.12 The use of the term “Jewish exile,” however, is equally problematic since it excludes those who left because of political convictions. It also presupposes a homogeneous group, which the Jews were not.13 According to the German census of 1933 there were five hundred thousand Jews in Germany, out of which 76 percent were born in Germany, 80 percent had German citizenship, and 20 percent were by and large immigrants from east Europe.14 The majority of the Jewish exiles belonged to the urban middle class but had politically very diverse affiliations ranging from Marxism to German nationalism. German exile literature would include only those who were German citizens and people like the Hungarians

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Andor Gabor, Ödon von Horvath, and Georg Lukács; the Austrians Robert Musil, Alfred Polgar, and Joseph Roth; or the Czechs Willy Haas, Ernst Weiss, Hans Natonek, and Erwin Kisch, who were not German nationals at the time of going into exile but wrote in German. Hence, the more inclusive nomenclature “German-speaking exile literature” is more representative, as it also includes those exiles from east Europe, who may not have been German nationals but wrote in German.15 The equally contentious issue of periodization in exile literature in postwar Germany was further complicated by the creation of two separate countries, the Federal Republic of Germany and the German Democratic Republic.16 According to the consensus in German studies, the period of nazism in Germany was a break in the development of German literature, as it became isolated from international developments, leading to its provincialization. However, the question of how the literature written in Germany and outside of Germany in the thirties and forties was to be integrated into the canon was a major concern in research on German exile literature until the 1960s. Subsequently there was a consensus to treat it as a separate epoch in literature.17 However, the focus remained centered on the writings of German or Austrian writers exiled in America or Europe. It was only in the nineties that, with impulses from history, sociology, and migration studies, the scope for interdisciplinarity widened, leading to microstudies of German-speaking exiles who fled from Nazi rule to places outside America and Europe, particularly Asia, and who were not necessarily German citizens.18 The work on the exile of Willy Haas in India has to be seen as an outcome of these developments in exile studies in the German-speaking world. An examination of his Indian exile texts provides an entry point for reflection on the following broad questions: Is the engagement of the European exile writer with the host culture to be explained merely as a function of material need (in the case of Willy Haas it was his work as scriptwriter for Bhavnani Studios in Bombay), or does the otherness of that host culture provide an impetus for it? How do received images of exile geographies or the locations of exile (exotic or familiar) get represented in texts or how do other forms of cultural transfers impinge on the form and content of the cultural production of the writer in exile? Christoph Eykman19 and Wulf Köpke,20 while exploring this aspect of exile studies, illustrate a range of responses by exile writers from utter rejection of the locale of exile to its glorification. This depended on the prior knowledge or images these writers brought with them, which, according to individual experience and disposition, were either rejected or reinforced. Using this as a hypothesis, the discussion of Haas’s Indian texts will focus on the impact that received textual representations of India at the beginning of the twentieth century had on the thematic choices and modes of representation of contemporary India of the 1940s.

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Haas encountered India in a variety of textual forms: through his academic engagement with Indology (the lectures of Professor Moritz Winternitz at Prague University); through Romain Rolland’s writings, which led him to admire Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s use of passive resistance to attain freedom from British colonial power in India; and, last but not least, in the form of Rudyard Kipling’s imperialist novel Kim, which whetted his desire to retrace the protagonist’s travels through the very country where he, ironically, went as an exile. It is pertinent to consider how such received images are juxtaposed against the encountered cosmopolitan imagery of colonial modernity in Bombay, where he lived and worked, and other cities, like Lahore, that he visited.21 Does the experience of living as an exile engaged in cultural production bring about a deeper and more nuanced comprehension of Indian cultural codes? This in the case of Haas extended beyond quotidian engagements to negotiating the differences of cinematic and literary idioms of the host country as a scriptwriter and literary critic.

II. Exile in India: Cultural Production and Transfer Haas’s texts relevant to this discussion are his essays on Indian culture and mythology published in India and later in Germany in Die Neue Rundschau,22 The Aryan Path,23 The Wind and the Rain,24 and the Indian section of his memoirs, Die literarische Welt: Erinnerungen, entitled Neue Heimat Indien.25 Before embarking on a textual analysis of the Indian essays and his autobiography and film scripts, a short biographical note on Willy Haas will help in understanding the specificities of the genres used and their impact on the processes of cultural transfer. Haas’s essays were made accessible to two sets of readership—for the Indian readership in English translation and for the German reader in German. Furthermore, in this context the complex issue of Haas’s avowed support for the Indian freedom struggle and Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi’s passive civil resistance and his allegiance to the British government for its antifascist struggle with the Allies in Europe will also be considered, as it is an important trope in the Indian section of his autobiography. Haas’s exile experience in India appears to be defined by two opposing pulls—his respect and admiration for Gandhi’s leadership of the anti-imperialist freedom struggle on the one hand and his allegiance to the colonial British government that was actively opposing fascism on the other. When Willy Haas was born to the advocate Gustav Haas and his wife, Bertha, on 7 June 1891, Prague, the city of his birth, was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. In common with the cosmopolitan Prague Jews such as Kafka, Max Brod, and Franz Werfel (who were later to be referred to as the Prague German writers), Haas was raised as a German speaker, and this language remained his medium of literary expression

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despite his being multilingual.26 Like many east European Jews, Haas too migrated to the culturally vibrant metropolis of Berlin of the Weimar years. Here he was to become a prolific literary and film critic. His early writings defended film as an art form, as did many other early film theoreticians such as Béla Balázs, Siegfried Kracauer, and Rudolph Arnheim. Haas also scripted about twenty-six film scenarios, among which W. G. Pabst’s Die freudlose Gasse became the most successful example of Neue Sachlichkeit in cinema. The crowning success of his Weimar years was the literary journal Die literarische Welt (1925–32), which he brought out for Rowohlt publishers. Other than the fact that it became the most widely circulated literary journal before it was sold in 1932, owing to the impending danger from the Nazis, Haas’s Die Literarische Welt became an important forum for literary expression for the writers and critics of that time, ranging from Hofmannsthal to Walter Benjamin. He moved back to Prague, but with the occupation of Czech territory by the Nazi forces, was forced to flee into exile via Italy to Bombay. In Bombay, Walter Kaufmann, Haas’s countryman and composer (who later composed the signature tune for All India Radio), found him employment as a scriptwriter for the Bhavnani Studios. He scripted some of the most successful films of the black and white era of 1940s Bombay cinema, films such as Kanchan, Jhooti Sharam (Naked Truth, which was an adaptation of Ibsen’s Ghosts), Prem Nagar (An Indian Village Story), and Asir of Asirgarh (the story of a brave village boy who follows a prophesy).27 The director of Bhavnani Studios, Mohan Bhavnani, had worked with the UFA and therefore spoke excellent German, which for Haas was a great relief. Yet he was to realize in the course of scripting that the premises on which each of them approached the form of cinematic expression were based on two entirely different philosophies of the functions and aesthetics of the performing arts. The idiom of the Bombay films was based on the classical Sanskrit tradition of Kalidasa (fifth century) and Sudraka (seventh century). This tradition has evolved in the folk theater forms of India such as Jatra in Bengal, Swang in Punjab, and Kathakali in Kerala. Here stories from epics, legends, and folklore were narrated through song and dance. It was this influence along with the expectations of the viewer that determined the evolution of the “film language” of Bombay cinema, which still marks its unique form of narrating a cinematic text.28 It was in this area that the exiled Haas had to first acquaint himself with the new aesthetic codes and then reorient himself from the aesthetics of Weimar film to that of the Bombay cinema of the 1940s. Although a detailed illustration of the eclectic tendencies of Weimar cinema (encompassing popular mainstream cinema targeted at the domestic audience to high-art expressionist cinema and the cinema of new objectivity)29 is outside the scope of this chapter, it may be mentioned here that Haas’s

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association as a scriptwriter was with one of the major proponents of Die neue Sachlichkeit (the new objectivity) and its realist aesthetics. Dealing with diverse topics such as war, inflation, prostitution, labor struggles, marital problems, and revolutionary politics, he created a fictional world that marked a break with the metaphysics of the image in the expressionist film.30 It was in this realm of cinema aesthetics that, through careful study of the traditions of performing arts in his exile homeland, Haas imbibed the idiom of the Indian cinema of the 1940s. Through this process of providing the scenarios for the films of Bhavnani Studios, the exile was to become a coproducer of a cultural product that, according to Georg Lukács, was the most technical of all the art forms of the twentieth century.31 His autobiography gives a vivid account of his years as scriptwriter in Bombay, during which he was to understand the binaries of film aesthetics on which the German films and the Bombay films of the 1940s were based. It also depicts how, through a study of Indian theater forms and their impact on the Bombay film, he was able to adapt Ibsen’s play Ghosts (Jhooti Sharam) into a film script assimilating the Indian film idiom. A brief excerpt from his autobiography will delineate the difference between the Aristotelian aesthetic principles on which Western cinema was based and those of the hybrid form of classical and folk traditions that Haas transcended in the five-hundred-page script of Jhooti Sharam: As Mrs. Alving hears of her son’s illness she falls in front of a picture of Krishna and sings an old mantra, and as Regine Engstrand lays the table she breaks into a song and a small orchestra plays along the melody. It was never unbearable—moreover all names have naturally been Indianized; and my friend Kaufmann, very knowledgeable about Asian music, had composed some very attractive compositions, half Indian and half European.32

In the following quote Raghunath Raina articulates the main difference between the two cinemas based on the difference of function attributed to them, which Haas had to take cognizance of and draw on in his scripts for Bhavnani Studios: Indian cinema was to evolve as a form of entertainment common to all, where conflicts are resolved without the death or decline of the hero. This was in complete opposition to the cinematic traditions of the West embedded in Aristotelian poetics. In Greek tragedy the fall of the hero is imminent and in Hindu drama he triumphs over all odds. . . .33

In order to comprehend and incorporate these elements in his scripts Haas went to Kathiawar to study folk theater. He concluded that this form of theater was far more irreverent and creative. Therefore, when

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writing the script of Prem Nagar, he infused these elements of village folk theater into the script. However, the only reference left of its content is a fourteen-page synopsis of the manuscript in the National Film Archives of India. It is a story of two pairs of siblings with a dose of magic, intrigue, murder, a scene before a judge, and finally a happy ending. Yet from his autobiography we gauge how fully he is prepared to shift to the cinematic codes of his exiled homeland: “if gods and magic, song and dance were to appear in an Indian film, then I wanted to make a real Indian fairytale film. Any film . . . where real gods appeared and not Ibsen anymore. . . .”34 The last film that he scripted for the Bhavnani Studios was Kanchan; Leela Chitnis, an important actress of that time, played the lead role. This was to become the greatest hit of Hindi cinema in 1941.35 Haas’s stint with the Bhavnani Studios ended with the studio’s bankruptcy. Subsequently, he devoted himself to writing about the host culture through his preferred genre of the essay, and like most of his countrymen he joined the British Indian Army to fight the Fascist forces in Europe.36 In this context it may be mentioned that this support for the British antifascist position also came from a liberal democratic section of the Indian National Congress led by Nehru, who saw fascism as a greater threat to the freedom struggles in Asia during that time.37 Willy Haas was not only involved in the process of cultural production in one of the most modern forms of cultural expression of the twentieth century, but also managed to negotiate the sometimes antithetical cultural perspectives of two different aesthetic traditions, one rooted in classical occidental practices and the other in the classical practices of the Orient, by applying a comparative narrative structure in his essays on India.38 These essays, though written in the first part of the twentieth century, are marked by the influence of the German Indological tradition. This is manifest in the constant reference to India’s ancient past as a means of comprehending its present, be it the myth of the Aryan invasion of the subcontinent or the use of religious and mythological metaphors and symbols—the real India was the one embedded in the ancient past of the Vedic ages. Various scholars and politicians belonging to different intellectual and ideological traditions and political persuasions identified the Aryans as a racial category and debated issues such as the original homeland of the Aryans and consequently whether they were foreign or indigenous to India. It is now quite conclusively established that the term “Aryans” refers not to a racial group but rather to the loose set of linguistic relationships existing between Aryan-speaking peoples.39 The Indian historian Romila Thapar explains this phenomenon in terms of the link between colonial interests in India and the intellectual conceptions developed in Europe about history and the Orient in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.40 Haas was influenced by academic developments in the European Indology of his time. James Mill had for the first time divided Indian history into the Hindu, Muslim,

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and British periods in History of British India at the beginning of the nineteenth century.41 Keeping this Hindu India as an ontological basis, Haas structured the representation of the contemporary cosmopolitan milieus of Bombay and Lahore and sociopolitical events in the discursive space of his essays.42 Within the corpus of his essays, the forty-two-page introduction to the anthology Germans beyond Germany and the three essays entitled The Teaching of German Literature in the Punjab Educational Journal exemplify his literary resistance to fascism, which at that time seemed to be his prime concern.43 These essays, devoted to such specifically Indian themes as the Indian concept of time, Sati (burning of widows), and the contemporary Indian family, were published in English in India and in German in journals such as Die neue Rundschau and Merkur, thus providing a dual readership. The dialogic form and the comparative framework, which functioned as narratological strategies for engaging with antithetical perspectives, are exemplified by the following reference to the highly contentious social issue of widow burning in the journal Aryan Path,44 which does not have recourse to the prevailing notion of the “white man’s burden” and its civilizing mission.45 The Indian and European perspectives on the issue are dealt with in a dialogic form, where the issues at hand are structured parallel to each other by the two authors, Dr. Radhakamal Mukerjee and Vilem Haas (by then Haas had started using the Czech version of his name). Haas then relates the burning of witches in Europe to the practice of Sati by referring to the Western mythologies of matriarchy as follows: It is a well-known fact that, in ancient India, the gift of prophecy was ascribed to widows before their cremation, as to the ancient Sibyls. And even today, in popular superstition, the widow is accredited with a kind of magic power, which is supposed to bring misfortune. In this connection it will perhaps be of interest that judging from the numerous reports and records, the majority of the witches who were burned in Europe actually seem to have been widows.46

Here a shift can be perceived in the European view of Sati in Indian society of that time. References in travelogues, official records, or fictional texts on Sati, which in fact can be traced back to the period of Alexander’s conquest,47 in the main evoke incomprehension, fear, and revulsion toward this practice, which was banned by the British Governor-General William Bentinck in 1829. In the essays there is a systematic process of working out the visual impressions in paradigms of causality through a studied engagement with the socioreligious and cultural issues of the Indian exile landscape, which prevents the emergence of hegemonic Eurocentric perspectives. Further, they are marked by a negation of the clichéd essentialization of the native,

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which is illustrated in the quotation below from the essay “The Indian Time Table.” It is often said that the Indian is indolent and passive. That is not true. The Indians are one of the most diligent peoples on the face of the earth. Time runs differently in India from what it does in Europe. The time-table which Indians have created for themselves, and which they live is different from the European one. . . . Indian time is not only burdened by history and tradition but is also deflected, retarded, diverted from its straight course along its own river-bed by many other currents of time—ahistoric and pre-historic, animistic, totemistic, mythological currents of time—the sumtotal of these, which, for the European, are irregular time-factors, we shall call the Indian doctrine of the transmigration of souls and reincarnation. . . . Nothing of the real Indian life, of the real Indian character can be explained unless one first understands this doctrine thoroughly. . . .48

This binary difference between the Hindu notion of cyclical time and that of the Occident, based on the linear Judeo-Christian progression of time and history, is considered by Haas as a crucial distinction, which anyone attempting to understand India must necessarily grasp. Other issues dealt with by Haas in the essays include the caste system, the Indian “joint family,” the transmigration of the soul, and Indian art. His chapter on India in the unabridged volume of his autobiography presents, from the first contact scene on the deck of the Conto Rosso to his return to Germany after the war, a text made conspicuous by the contemporaneity of the urban India portrayed and a shift away from the Germanophone discourse on India. Haas achieves a nuanced depiction of a people and society at one of the most important moments in modern times—the struggle for independence from British colonial rule. Although Haas’s ontological basis is ancient Hindu India, the narrative of his autobiography marks out the various religious and social groups ranging from the Parsees of Bombay to the Muslims, Sikhs, Jews, and Christians. Moreover, the space accorded to his years in the Bombay film industry, and the themes and images with which it engages, also make it a document that captures the spirit of the age.

III. Conclusion In conclusion, the questions this chapter has raised about the possibility of exile in the Orient as a nonhegemonic space between the Occident and the Orient may be briefly summarized. The subdiscipline of German exile studies, which has traditionally been geographically limited to exile in the Occident and focused on the canonical literary forms of the period, could

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fruitfully explore, through the discovery of other places of exile such as Shanghai, Fiji, and India, and other genres of writing such as the essay and the autobiography, narratives that mark a shift toward perceptions of these places that differ from those of the missionary, the travel writer, or the colonial bureaucrat. Moreover, nonfictional texts like the essay, with its discursive possibilities, and the genre of autobiography—despite all poststructuralist negations of its historical content49—could help in understanding more fully exile geographies outside the occidental world. Haas was an exile located in the interstices of what for him was a dominant, benevolent colonial Indian state and the quotidian experiences of urban, cosmopolitan India and an intellectual genealogy that went back to Indological orientalism. Together, these combined to produce a context that was vastly different from that in which nineteenth- and early twentieth-century colonial officials and scholars wrote and imagined India. Haas’s perception of India, despite its acceptance of Hinduism as a civilizational trait, transcended simplistic and pejorative essentializations of India and its peoples. It appears that the place of exile—that is, the particularities of the context of exile with its associated political configurations, competing ideologies, and contradictory contemporary histories—and the exiled author’s location in these multiple relationships, came together powerfully to influence Haas’s ability to adapt and synthesize in important ways the aesthetic codes of Western cinema with the aspirations, sensitivities, and preoccupations of nascent Indian cinema. Most studies of exile writings have dealt with the writings of European exiles in the Occident, where the literary output during exile did not differ substantively from what was produced in the homeland and the place of exile did not constitute itself into a creative motif. By contrast, in the case of Haas’s corpus of exile writings, the exiled homeland that happened to be a non-Western locale became central to his literary output. Located in India, Haas’s exile texts are marked by their engagement with the culture of the place of exile and its contemporary images. In Haas’s essays the deployment of the comparative framework as a narrative device can be clearly discerned as a means to circumvent and to attenuate the dominant hegemonic stereotypes of the Orient where he was exiled and where his work as writer and essayist made him a participant in cultural production during those crucial years when the end game of empire had begun.

Notes 1 Willy Haas, ed., “Zeitgemässes aus der Literarischen Welt” von 1925–1932 (Stuttgart: J. G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung, 1963). 2

Christoph von Ungern-Sternberg, Willy Haas, 1891–1973: “Ein großer Regisseur der Literatur” (Munich: text + kritik, 2007), 186.

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3 Vilem Haas, ed., Germans beyond Germany: An Anthology, biographical notes and introduction by Vilem Haas (Bombay: The International Book House, 1942). 4

Willy Haas, Die literarische Welt: Erinnerungen (Munich: Paul List Verlag, 1957), 201–67. 5

Edward Said, Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Penguin, 1991), 99. 6

Christoph Eykman, “Zwischen Zerrbild, Schreckbild und Idealbild: Die Auseinandersetzung mit dem Asylland,” in Kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen im Exil— Exile across Cultures, ed. Helmut F. Pfanner (Bonn: Bourvier, 1986), 35–48; Wulf Köpke: “‘Innere Exilgeographie’? Die Frage nach der Affinität zu den Exilländern,” in Pfanner, Kulturelle Wechselbeziehungen, 13–24. 7

I am referring here to the following essays by Willy Haas: “The Indian TimeTable: The Background to Its Art and Thought,” in The Wind and the Rain 5, no. 1 (1948), ed. Neville Braybooke (London: The Phoenix Press, 1948), 26–47; “Raum und Zeit im indischen Mythos,” in Indien und Deutschland: Ein Sammelband, ed. H. O. Günther (Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1956), 77–90; Vilem Haas and Radhakamal Mukerjee, “Hindu Widows,” in The Aryan Path 12, no. 6 (1941), ed. Sophia Wadia (Bombay: United Lodge of Theosophists, 1941), 396–405. 8

Julia Kristeva, “A New Type of Intellectual: The Dissident,” in The Kristeva Reader, ed. Toril Moi (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 298.

9

Eric Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914–1991 (London: Viking 1994), 6–7. 10

Horst Möller, Exodus der Kultur: Schriftsteller, Wissenschaftler und Künstler in der Emigration nach 1933 (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1984), 38–40. 11

Jost Hermand, “Schreiben in der Fremde: Gedanken zur deutschen Exilliteratur seit 1789,” in Exilliteratur, 1933–1945, ed. Wulf Koepke and Michael Winkler (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989), 71. 12

Hans-Albert Walter, Bedrohung und Verfolgung: Deutsche Exilliteratur, 1933– 1950 (Stuttgart: Luchterhand, 1978), 197–98.

13

Ibid., 198–99.

14

Eva Beling, Die gesellschaftliche Eingliederung der deutschen Einwanderer in Israel: Eine soziologische Untersuchung der Einwanderung aus Deutschland zwischen 1933 und 1945 (Frankfurt am Main: Europäische Verlagsanstalt, 1967), 13. 15

Walter, Bedrohung und Verfolgung, 200.

16

Hans Dietrich Schäfer, Das gespaltene Bewußtsein: Über deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit, 1933–1945 (Stuttgart: Carl Hanser, 1996), 55. 17

Ibid., 55–56.

18

These aspects of German exile literature research are referred to in Hans-Albert Walter, Deutsche Exilliteratur, 1933–1950 (Stuttgart: J. B Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung und Carl Ernst Poeschel Verlag, 1984), 263–93. It is also dealt with in the following works: Georg Armbrüster, Michael Kohlstruck, and Sonja Mühlberger, eds., Exil Shanghai: Jüdisches Leben in der Emigration, 1938–1947 (Teetz:

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Hentrich & Hentrich, 2000); Astrid Freyeisen, Shanghai und die Politik des Dritten Reiches (Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2000). Johannes Voigt published his article on the exile of East European Jews in India in Wechselwirkungen: Jahrbuch 1991; Aus Lehre und Forschung der Universität Stuttgart (Stuttgart: University of Stuttgart, 1991), 83–95. See also Anil Bhatti and Johannes Voigt, eds., Jewish Exile in India, 1933–1945 (New Delhi: Manohar, 1999). 19

Eykman, “Zwischen Zerrbild,” 35–45.

20

Köpke, “‘Innere Exilgeographie’?,” 13–24.

21

Reference is to Partha Chatterjee’s position on the relationship between modernity and colonialism in India. Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1999), 3–13. 22

Willi Haas, “Indische Probleme,” in Die Neue Rundschau, October 1946, ed. Walter Singer (Stockholm: Bergmann Fischer Verlag, 1946), 81–93. 23

Haas and Mukerjee, “Hindu Widows,” 396–405.

24

Haas, “The Indian Time-Table,” 26–48.

25

Haas, Literarische Welt: Erinnerungen, 201–67.

26

Karin Sandfort-Osterwald, Willy Haas, introduction Rolf Italiaander, Hamburger Bibliographien 8 (Hamburg: Hans Christians Verlag, 1969), 15.

27

These facts are based on Haas’s private papers (given to Anil Bhatti by Herta Haas): see also note 43. Also see Bhatti and Voigt, Jewish Exile in India, 114; and Ungern-Sternberg, Willy Haas, 180–91. 28

Yves Thoraval, The Cinemas of India (Delhi: Macmillan, 2000), 17.

29

Thomas Elsaesser, Weimar Cinema and After, Germany’s Historical Imaginary (London: Routledge, 2000), 18–19. 30 Sabine Hake, German National Cinema, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2008), 38–39. 31

Georg Lukács, introduction to Guido Aristarcos, Marx, das Kino und die Kritik des Films (Munich: Carl Hanser, 1981), 7–10. 32

Haas, Literarische Welt: Erinnerungen 230. The translation is my own.

33

Raghunath Raina, “Geschichte des indischen Kinos,” in Kino in Indien, ed. Chidananda Dasgupta and Werner Kobe (Freiburg i.Br.: Verlag Wolf Mersch, 1986), 29–31.

34

Ibid., 231. The translation is my own.

35

Ungern-Sternberg, Willy Haas, 186.

36

Haas, Literarische Welt: Erinnerungen 203–5.

37

Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (New Delhi: Penguin, 2004), 466–70.

38

Eric Stokes, The English Utilitarians and India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1989), 47–80, 140–233. See also Sumit Sarkar, Modern India, 1885–1947 (New Delhi: Macmillan, 1983), 22–24; and K. N. Panikkar, Culture, Ideology, Hegemony: Intellectuals and Social Consciousness in Colonial India (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1998), 1–7.

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39

Romila Thapar, “The Aryan Question Revisited,” http://ascjnu.tripod.com/ aryan.html (accessed 8 May 2013). 40

Romila Thapar, Early India: From the Origins to AD 1300 (New Delhi: Penguin, 2002), 1–37. 41

Ibid.

42

Romila Thapar, Cultural Pasts: Essays in Early Indian History (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2000), 3–51; Moriz Winternitz, A History of Indian Literature, vol. 1 (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidas, 1996), 7–20.

43

Sophia Wadia’s letter to Willy Haas, 12 December 1941; Willy Haas’s letter to the Consulate of the CSR, 20 August 1945; Hetty Kohn’s letter to Haas, 6 January (letters given to Anil Bhatti from the private collection of Herta Haas). 44

Haas and Mukerjee, “Hindu Widows,” 396–405.

45

Stokes, English Utilitarians; also see Sarkar, Modern India, 22–24; Panikkar, Culture, Ideology, Hegemony, 1–7. 46

Haas and Mukerjee, “Hindu Widows,” 400.

47

Andrea Major, ed., Sati: A Historical Anthology (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2007), 11–12. 48

Haas, “The Indian Time-Table,” 26. This topic is also dealt with in his essay “Raum und Zeit im indischen Mythos,” 77–90. 49

Ulrich Breuer and Beatrice Sandberg, eds., Autobiographisches Schreiben in der deutschsprachigen Gegenwartsliteratur: Grenzen der Identität und Fiktionalität, vol. 1 (Munich: Iudicium, 2006), 344–45.

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8: Distant Neighbors: Uses of Orientalism in the Late NineteenthCentury Austro-Hungarian Empire Johann Heiss and Johannes Feichtinger

I

N CONTRAST TO Edward Said’s classical model, modes of so-called orientalist thinking and writing in the Habsburg monarchy provide a more differentiated idea of the Orient. It would be inaccurate to speak of just one form of orientalist discourse in the late Habsburg Empire. This chapter will consider at least two variants, outlining and then illustrating them through quotations from influential Austro-Hungarian policymakers.1 One variant represents the image of the Orient as “distant” (referring to the Ottoman Empire and the Turks, who were both kept at a distance in consequence of their defeat at the gates of Vienna in 1683, commemorated at the bicentennial celebrations), while the other conceives the Orient as “close to home” (Bosnia-Herzegovina and the Southern Slavic peoples); both variants were deployed, mainly for political reasons, by various protagonists. Both modes of thinking were decisively affected by two events: the occupation and later annexation of the former Ottoman provinces Bosnia and Herzegovina in the year 1878, and in 1883 the bicentennial anniversary of the siege of Vienna by the Turks (1683) and its victorious relief. This chapter seeks to reconstruct precisely this complexity and differentiation within Habsburg discourses on the Orient during the period in question. In 2003 Edward Said pointed out the achievements of postcolonial criticism: “The problem, then, is to keep in mind two ideas that are in many ways antithetical—the fact of the imperial divide, on the one hand, and the notion of shared experiences, on the other—without diminishing the force of either.”2 Said’s notion of “imperial divide” and “shared experiences” may be applied to the border zone, both geographical and conceptual, between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires. In his view the “imperial divide” is the line between colonizers and colonized. The phrase “shared experiences” refers to the fact that the history of both colonizers and colonized are intertwined histories with overlapping territories: “There was never a total barrier separating one historical experience from the other, it would be wrong to ignore the original and, I would say,

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enabling rift between black and white, between imperial authority and natives, that persisted during the entire period of classical imperialism.”3 This chapter will argue that it is legitimate to place the idea of “shared experiences” in the Austro-Hungarian context. However, as history shows, even the idea of “shared experiences” as introduced by Said was deployed for colonizing purposes: immediately after the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina it was used by Habsburg authorities and opinion leaders to legitimize the colonizing effort. This chapter will show that Austro-Hungarian orientalist politicians and other opinionmakers made use of the idea of “sharing” as a colonial strategy, with regard not only to common experiences but also to common spaces: the idea of “shared spaces” was used additionally for this purpose by contemporary political activists who referred to spaces of transition (“Uebergangsgebilde von bunter occidentalisch-orientalischer Färbung”),4 whether they are located in the Orient “close to home” or in the “distant” Orient. The two meanings of the word “share” alluded to are derived from the German verb “teilen,” which tellingly denotes the dual meanings of “to divide” and “to share commonly.” In the late nineteenth century, Austrian orientalist activists did not use the idea of an “imperial divide” to legitimize colonial enterprises in those distant territories pejoratively called the Orient, such as heartlands of the Ottoman Empire, but rather to establish stable borders between the Ottoman and the Habsburg Empires, as well as against the Turks living in newly acquired provinces. By contrast, the Habsburg colonizers utilized the ideas of “shared experiences” with the Southern Slavs and “shared spaces” between both empires in order to legitimize their colonial and cultural mission. Arguably, Said’s concept of an “imperial divide” can be identified to a certain degree with the kind of orientalist thinking that perceives the Orient as “distant.” The second form of orientalism, which understands the Orient as “close to home,” makes use of the idea of “shared experiences,” and at least partly that of “shared spaces.” In the period in question, a dichotomy between good and bad orientals began to develop within the territories of the dual monarchy: the Southern Slavs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Christians as well as Muslims, were perceived as the good orientals residing in the Orient “close to home,” whereas the Turks living in the newly acquired provinces and beyond, also perceived as Muslims, were seen as the less desirable occupants of an ostensibly “distant” Orient. This chapter seeks to deconstruct the ideas of “shared experiences” and “shared spaces” by showing them to be instruments of a colonial purpose. Both were used politically: “shared experiences” and “shared spaces” were usually used for the inclusion of the Southern Slavs and for the exclusion of the Turks in Bosnia and Herzegovina; the term “imperial divide” was used only for the purpose of the demarcation and exclusion of

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the Turks. Since the Turks had been conceived as longstanding enemies in the Habsburg lands and beyond, this kind of demarcation provided a tool for the identification and equation of new enemies inside and outside the Habsburg Empire. The Turks continued to be hated; therefore, during the last third of the nineteenth century, the image of the Turk was often used within political and religious discourses as a surrogate to represent liberals, Jews, and other foes of the day.5 The interplay of the two concepts of an “imperial divide” and “shared experiences” (or “shared spaces”) determined how notions of the Orient manifested in the discourses of the Habsburg lands. It is significant that two forms of orientalism prevailed there: one analogous to the “imperial divide,” which was primarily used for the exclusion of enemies and the inclusion of friends, thus strengthening cohesion in social and political groups; the other, “shared experiences” and “shared spaces,” as a tool to identify those subjects and spaces that could be civilized and those that could not. On the one hand, the Orient was viewed as a threat, usually in cases where the Orient was conceived and represented as “distant,” though a threat that could be overcome and from which scenarios of victory could be derived. On the other hand, when thought of as “close to home,” the Orient was viewed as an opportunity for actual or quasi-colonial enterprises and made possible the notion of civilizing missions by the empire. Notwithstanding the partially inclusive function of the notions of “shared experiences” and “shared spaces” and the exclusive function of the notion of an “imperial divide,” both forms of orientalism proved and still prove to be tools of valuation, division, and creating distance.

I. Opinionmakers, Speeches, and Sermons Nowhere are the two modes of orientalism described above better expressed than in the speeches and sermons of five prominent figures in late nineteenth-century Austrian public life. Two of them (Joseph Deckert, Max von Klinkowström), both Catholic priests and preachers, use the negative image of the Turks to construct an insurmountable divide between themselves and their contemporary enemies: their orientalist attitude is preoccupied with the “distant” Orient. Another activist (Joseph Alexander Helfert) utilizes both modes of orientalism: the notion of an Orient “close to home” is used to legitimize a mission to further civilize the good oriental Slavs of Bosnia and Herzegovina, while the notion of a “distant” Orient, especially embodied by the Turks, serves to represent those who are beyond civilization. A third group of activists (Benjamin von Kállay, Rudolf von Scala) used both forms of orientalism for the same aim of bringing civilization to the near Orient at or within the empire’s borders and to the “distant” Orient.

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The most controversial form of orientalist thought was used by the Viennese Catholic parish priest and entrepreneur Dr. Joseph Deckert.6 As a conservative preacher of hatred, he vilified both Jews and Protestants, whom he regarded as the threat of the age, comparing them with the “Turkish menace” of 1683. On the occasion of the two-hundred-year jubilee of the relief of Vienna, Deckert, as parish priest, initiated the construction of a new parish church in Weinhaus (in the eighteenth district of Vienna). Since the financing of the project proved to be difficult, Deckert had to spend years raising money with rather dubious methods. One involved preaching and publishing. He regularly published his violent diatribes in his anti-Semitic journal, Der Sendbote des Heiligen Joseph. In Türkennoth und Judenherrschaft (1893),7 Deckert polemicized publicly against the “Jewish threat” and drew a parallel between the Jews of the late nineteenth century and the Turks, who had once posed an equivalent threat, but who had been defeated at the gates of Vienna in 1683. Deckert’s agitation became the object of interventions in the Austrian Reichsrat and led to the repudiation of his hateful preaching from the pulpit by Prime Minister Alfred Windischgrätz and judicial proceedings against his efforts to verify Jewish ritual murder (Ein Ritualmord—Actenmässig nachgewiesen, 1893).8 Deckert was sentenced to pay fines several times. In 1896 he published eight speeches under the title Juden raus.9 In 1897, when Karl Lueger became mayor of Vienna, Deckert became even more popular, and in 1899 he was awarded the Salvator gold medal for his “merits.” When Deckert died in Vienna in 1901, the square in front of the church in Weinhaus had already been named after him.10 The conservative Austro-Bohemian politician, legal scholar, and historian Joseph Alexander Helfert,11 born in Prague in 1820, made quite different use of the Orient—understood now in terms of human communities of ostensibly oriental people within and beyond the empire. His thinking on the matter first came to prominence on the occasion of the occupation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1878) and the two-hundredyear jubilee of the relief of Vienna (1883). In his writings Bosnisches12 and Die weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung des Wiener Sieges von 1683,13 Helfert constructed a dichotomy between the cultured Europeans and the Turks, who could not in his view be civilized. Within the recently acquired Ottoman provinces he discerned two kinds of inhabitants: the bad Turks and the good Southern Slavs (including Bosnian Muslims), and, consequently, denounced those who wanted to overcome the rift between Turks und Europeans as “Turkophiles.” In 1848 Helfert was appointed under-secretary of education, a position he held during the socalled neoabsolutist period until 1861. He made his career in the period after the suppressed revolution of 1848. In 1863 he was appointed director of the “K. K. Central-Commission zur Erforschung und Erhaltung der Baudenkmale” (Central Agency for the Protection of the Historical

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Heritage of the Habsburg Monarchy), staying in this position until he died at the age of ninety. He proved to be a reliable supporter of the church in its fight against control by the state. Helfert was the founder and life-long president of the Leo Society (after Pope Leo XIII), which promoted the enhancement of conservative Catholic scholarship. After his retirement from high-ranking political office, he intensified his prolific work as a historian and influential political commentator in conservative newspapers. Helfert died in Vienna in 1910. Benjamin von Kállay,14 born in 1839 in Budapest, gained prominence as an Austro-Hungarian civil servant and politician. After the creation of the dual monarchy in 1867 he was appointed consul-general of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy in Belgrade, where he especially promoted the interests of the Hungarian state. In 1875 he became a member of the Hungarian parliament for the conservative party, and in 1879 administrative head of the joint Foreign Office in Vienna. As joint minister of finance (a position he held until his death), he was appointed administrator of Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1882. He was influential in transforming the monarchy’s new inhabitants to fit his vision of a civilized Western society. Born into a noble family, he was well educated, had traveled widely (to Turkey, among other places), and knew the South Slavic region and languages well. As a historian he researched the history of Serbia and was considered the major specialist of the South Slavic region of his time. In his view, the speech Ungarn an den Grenzen des Orients und des Occidents,15 which he delivered at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, was his most important work. In it, he argued for the Habsburg mission to civilize Bosnia and Herzegovina and, in connection with that, for the special role of Hungary, which had proved itself for centuries as a link between Europe and the Orient. This speech further exemplifies the twofold uses of the Orient presented in this chapter. Kállay served as administrator of Bosnia and Herzegovina for twenty-one years until his death in 1903. In his attitude to orientalism, Max von Klinkowström,16 a renowned conservative preacher and member of the Jesuit order, represented the majority view of the Catholic Church. Born in Vienna in 1819, he acted as a popular missionary in Austria before he went to Australia for two years. There he contributed to the establishment of a Jesuit mission. After his return he became famous for his Sunday sermons in Vienna, Prague, and Laibach/Ljubljana, where he served as head of the newly founded branch of the Jesuit order. As the most renowned and celebrated preacher of his time in central Europe, Klinkowström attracted a vast number of people. Like Joseph Deckert he drew a parallel between the enemies of his time and the Turks, who had been defeated. Klinkowström focused not on the Jews but on the rising liberal movement, which threatened the predominance of the Catholic Church in Austria. This campaign is reflected in his sermon,

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delivered at the celebrations in the Viennese St. Stephen’s Cathedral in 1883 (the so-called triduum).17 This speech will also be considered in more detail below. Klinkowström died in Vienna in 1896. A variant on these orientalist discourses was also employed by the protagonists of the Oriental Museum (Orientalisches Museum), which was opened in Vienna in 1875. Arthur von Scala, a Viennese civil servant who had traveled around the world, was appointed its first director. He edited the museum’s journal Oesterreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient, which focused primarily on stimulating trade relations with the Orient.18 This commerce-oriented approach required an understanding of the Orient as a world in itself, which considered the Ottoman Empire as quite different from and certainly inferior to Europe. Viennese high society involved in the activities of the Oriental Museum clearly advanced the idea of an Austrian civilizing mission in the late Ottoman Empire and other territories farther eastward. Especially relevant in this context is the speech Über die wichtigsten Beziehungen des Orients zum Occidente in Mittelalter und Neuzeit19 delivered at the Oriental Museum in 1887 by Rudolf von Scala, later professor of ancient history, who was the director’s brother.20 Born in 1860 into the liberal Scala family, Rudolf took a German nationalist position, which was perceived as progressive in contemporary politics. The nationalist ideology not only informed his political activities but also his academic work and public lecturing. He established ancient history as a discipline at the University of Innsbruck, where he became the first full professor, and later vice-chancellor and president. He was a life-long member of a German nationalist student fraternity. From the position of Austro-German superiority, Rudolf von Scala promoted in his speech the idea of a cultural mission to the Orient. He died in 1919.

II. The Function of the “Distant” Orient It is instructive to consider the adjectives and combinations of words that were used to characterize the spaces of both the Occident and the “distant” Orient. Language was used to create distance and ethno-cultural distinctions between groupings deemed “valuable” to the empire and barbarous peoples beyond the pale. Language proved to be a tool of cultural devaluation. In many cases, Europe was related to “Civilisation,”21 “Gesittung,”22 and “christliche Cultur,”23 whereas Asia, the East, and the Turks were designated as “Barbaren,” “barbarisch,” or “Barbarei,”24 “Tyrannen,”25 and “cultur- und bildungsfeindlich”26—and Islam was labeled “fanatisch.”27 Single protagonists on the European side are described as “edel,”28 “ritterlich,”29 “kühn,”30 “todesmuthig,”31 “umsichtig”;32 the other side is characterized as “roh,”33 “barbarisch,”34 and “herrschsüchtig.”35 A process of cultural mirroring can be discerned here: the devaluing of the oriental other provides evidence of how Europeans themselves would have

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liked to be seen vis-à-vis their Eastern others, while the valorization of the European self suggests how Europeans wanted to see the enemy.36 Additionally, the “barbarische Völkermassen”37 appear as a flood of invading or encroaching marauders, as implied by verbs such as “hereinstürmen”38 or “heranwälzen,”39 and as compared with nouns implying a more literal flood or deluge: “Fluthen” or “Überfluthungen.”40 Terms like “Völkermassen” and the repeated use of the collective singular create a homogeneous sense of this Habsburg view of the Orient, reinforcing the polarization between Orient and Occident, devaluing the latter in the process. In many cases the statements of the speakers transcend the here and now; they are in a sense sanctified, as the speakers relate them to God, the Bible, or divine providence. One of Helfert’s texts exemplifies how the idea of “Asia” is constructed: Die Geschichte unseres Welttheiles weist in allen großen Phasen ihres Verlaufes nach Sonnenaufgang hin und bekundet in den von dorther kommenden Einwirkungen einen dreifach verschiedenen Charakter: Besiedelung von Osten her, Auffrischung von Osten her, Bedrohung von Osten her.”41

In the following passage, Helfert explicates these three cultural “imprints” left on the West by the Orient and adds: Aber diese Bildung und Gesittung . . . war wiederholt bedroht durch jene dritte Art von Einwirkung des asiatischen Ostens auf den europäischen Westen: durch das Heranstürmen barbarischer Völkermassen gegen die in ihrer staatlichen Ordnung und gesellschaftlichen Gliederung begriffenen christlichen Reiche.42

Klinkowström condenses this idea, writing that “Schaaren des Ostens wälzten sich heran.”43 Under the banner of “Bedrohung,” adjectives like “asiatisch” and “barbarisch” are used, together with nouns like “Heranstürmen.” The European side is described not only as Christian, but also characterized by governmental and social order. A sentence by Klinkowström sums up these ideas: “Asien schien wieder einmal Europa erdrücken zu wollen.”44 The last quotation gives a further example of the rhetorical technique of homogenization and reduction, which paves the way to polarization; for instance, the use of abstract concepts such as the names of continents (Europe, Asia) or of symbols (crescent and cross), instead of referring to tangibles by naming of the respective inhabitants or the believers.

III. The Function of the Orient “Close to Home” In 1878 Austria-Hungary received a mandate to occupy Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had been geographically adjacent to the Habsburg

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monarchy but had been (politically) Ottoman for four centuries, leaving behind a sizeable Muslim population. The recently published works of Robin Okey, Robert J. Donia, and Bojan Aleksov show that BosniaHerzegovina was perceived as a land ripe for mission work lying on Europe’s noncivilized edge.45 In fact, there were at least two ways of understanding the Habsburg colonial mission, no longer disputed in the scholarship:46 The Habsburg civil administration, implemented in Bosnia-Herzegovina, could put into practice the colonial vision of imposing Western civilization on an oriental province. This civilizing mission could also show “the superiority of the Habsburg multinational idea over ethnic nationalism,”47 or—to put it another way—the superiority of the idea of state nationalism over a South Slavic, language-based cultural nationalism. In contrast to the idea of the nation-state, state nationalism promoted the idea of a transcultural Austrian state entity, whereas cultural nationalism referred to the liberal-bourgeois vision of particular national identities based on common linguistic, cultural, and ethnic roots. Cultural nationalism finally paved the way to the nation-state. In some ways, both forms of nationalism served the purpose of promoting integration, but on different scales and with different outcomes. State nationalism had an inclusive effect for the Habsburg monarchy as a whole, thereby stabilizing the dynastic rule; cultural nationalism had an exclusive effect for single national groups (called nationalities, e.g., Czechs, Poles, Italians, etc.) living inside the empire, raising awareness of their political identity and potentially leading them to demand democratic standards of rule.48 As Okey, Donia, and Aleksov have shown, the project of civilizing Bosnia and Herzegovina provided a justification for the Habsburg colonial venture, and colonialism proved to be a means of enhancing the leading idea of state nationalism while simultaneously neutralizing rising Southern Slav cultural nationalism or “taming Balkan Nationalism.”49 The Habsburg authorities put Southern Slav national activism in Bosnia and Herzegovina under strict surveillance: “Bosnians were among the most closely watched people on the face of the earth.”50 The authorities proceeded paternalistically in imposing Western education, rule of law, and confessional equality. The Southern Slav peoples were not treated as politically informed nations, but rather as religious groups. In practice, the Habsburg administrative authorities assigned them to the religious sphere, and called them Greeks (Orthodox), Latins (Catholics), or Turks (Muslim). Politics remained reserved for the civilizing state, while confessional groups were given privileges. Mosques were reestablished throughout the country, and a multireligious Bosnian identity was imposed.51 Between 1912 and 1915 the Habsburg authorities enacted the most progressive law on Islam (“Islamgesetz”) of the time in Europe.52 It legally recognized the Islam of the Hanafite tradition as a religion of the state. However, although Islam was not repressed, the new regime was

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convinced that Ottomanism had never been able to strike root in Bosnia and Herzegovina. If Ottomanism had not indeed struck root there, the population of this oriental province might maintain the capability of becoming as civilized as Habsburg (or Western) society. Joseph von Helfert, one of the most important Austrian political commentators, proposed distinguishing between the Ottoman intruders and the indigenous Slavic population: “Es waren blühende Länder, im Fortschritt begriffen wie irgend ein anderes in jenem Jahrhundert, da sie unter die Herrschaft des Halbmondes kamen: die Türken haben diese Länder durch ein grausames, mit Menschenleben und Menschenwürde spielendes Regiment zur Hälfte entvölkert, haben den Aufschwung derselben, jeden Anlauf zum Bessern gehemmt und im Keime erstickt!”53 Helfert’s object of hatred, the “National=Türke,” had always been foreign in Bosnia,54 whereas in his eyes the Slavs had preserved their “unverdorbene Ursprünglichkeit.”55 Helfert’s emphasis on Bosnia and Herzegovina as a region populated by two communities—self-confident, aspiring Slavs, who had been free in the past, and the “barbarous” Turks—paved the way for the promotion of a Habsburg civilizing mission. In so doing, he introduced an idea that was no less orientalist than the colonially driven orientalism that Edward Said had referred to in 1978, although it was, in other ways, very different. Whereas Said perceived the main characteristic of orientalism as the construction of fundamental, ineradicable, and ontological divisions between Occident and Orient, Helfert proposed the idea of zones of transition, half Orient and half Occident. These territories could, according to him, be “recaptured” through such strategies of colonialism and their concomitant cultural missions—a worthwhile endeavor in his view. Three examples—Helfert, Kállay, and Scala—bear witness to the Habsburg form of strategically deployed orientalist discourse, which is characterized by both functions of the Orient: its devaluation in the interests of European self-valorization and the idea of a civilizing mission. Helfert, who had not visited Bosnia and Herzegovina before writing his polemical book Bosnisches in 1879, noticed in the Ottoman provinces occupied and administrated by the Habsburg Empire an all-pervasive “Türkenfurcht” and “Türkenhaß” across all non-Islamic strata of society:56 He traced fear and hatred back to “türkische Miswirthschaft,” “ungeregelte Willkür,” and “lüderlichem Schlendrian,” as well as “muslimische Tyrannei.”57 The Turkish regime had taken the risk of making itself unpopular even among the Islamic Southern Slavs. Muslim Bosnians and Herzegovinians, Helfert argued in Bosnisches, were of the same ethnic origin as Catholic and Orthodox Slavs. They shared languages and ideas.58 In his eyes Bosnia-Herzegovina had definitely remained a Slavic country:59

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Der Volksstamm, von welchem die Bosna und Hercegovina bewohnt werden, ein Zweig des großen serbisch=kroatischen Stammes, ist in seiner körperlichen Erscheinung einer der edelsten; seine Sprache . . . ist, obwohl etwas mit türkischen Ausdrücken untermischt, eine der wohllautendsten der slawischen Raçe. . . . Kurz sie besitzen eine Menge der trefflichsten Eigenschaften.60

Helfert argued in this way for setting a divide between the Turks and the Slavs, the “bad” and the “good” Muslim. Here the Turk; there the islamicized, good Slav. In Helfert’s eyes, the “muslimische Tyrannei” had created a kind of primitive state throughout the Turkish Empire: a fact that gave him and others grounds for promoting an Austrian civilizing mission. Since the Slavic peoples of Bosnia-Herzegovina had not become fully orientalized, they were capable of being reconquered for the civilized world. The Austro-Hungarian policymakers developed a differentiated view on the Orient: an Orient (islamicized Slavs) that served as an object of civilizing missions, and an Orient (Turks, be they close or far away) unable to become civilized at all. This understanding is at variance with Said, who maintains that the Orient as a whole was imagined as an object of European civilizing missions. Helfert was only one among many political commentators who appealed for both a civilizing mission to the Orient “close to home” and a devaluation of and distancing from the “distant” Orient. The Austrian army officer and travel writer Amand Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, for instance, also gave voice to his deep-seated hatred of the “Türkenregiment” that shows “die tiefste Verkommenheit” in Bosnia: “Oesterreich-Ungarn ist nunmehr berufen, in dem früheren Vilajet Bosna geordnete Zustände herbeizuführen und die Einrichtungen, socialen Verhältnisse, Culturzustände und Lebensäusserungen aller Art einer langsamen Umwandlung im Sinne abendländischer Cultur und Civilisation zu unterziehen.”61 Or to put it in Helfert’s words: “Der Oesterreicher hat hier das Werk des Römers wieder aufzunehmen,” and he is urged “einer neuen schöpferischen und gefälligeren Ordnung der Dinge eine Stätte [zu] bereiten.”62 Whereas Helfert and other opinionmakers proclaimed the civilizing of the Orient “close to home,” Benjamin von Kállay took a further step: he pursued a civilizing program for colonial purposes. As minister of finance, Kállay was the head of Habsburg’s civil administration of both provinces for twenty years. In his widely discussed lecture delivered to the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1883, he used the idea of Western superiority and the mediatory (or civilizing) role he assigned to Hungary to legitimize in theory what he planned to do in Bosnia and Herzegovina, namely, to advance Habsburg’s colonial venture. Kállay drew the borderline between Orient and Occident not at the Bosporus, but envisioned it extending far into Europe, and thus differentiated between a

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non-European and a European Orient. He assigned a mediatory role to the latter, to which—in Kállay’s eyes—Hungary once belonged. He characterized the Magyars as an “orientalisches Volk”63 who had seized the land a thousand years ago. They had neither been absorbed by the peoples once living there nor had they remained unassimilated like the Turks. As part of a political nation of citizens who enjoyed equal rights, the Magyar people had absorbed non-Magyar peoples into itself. Thus Hungary became a Western nation, able to understand both East and West and to be understood by both.64 According to Kállay, Hungary’s “in-between” position qualified it to head the mediatory (or civilizing) mission to the Orient “close to home.” In fact, it was in these areas that Kállay would concentrate his future political activities. In his address he concluded: Nicht ewig kann der Orient in starrer Abgeschlossenheit verharren. Früher oder später wird die Summe der moralischen und materiellen Kräfte, welche den Riesengeist des Occidents ausmacht, die noch aufrecht stehenden Schranken niederreißen. . . . Und unser ist, wenn wir es wollen, die Führerrolle in der Lösung dieser Aufgabe.”65

The leadership role to which he alludes falls, of course, to the Habsburg monarchy, and in particular to Hungary.

IV. Deploying Orientalism: Colonial Ventures and Identity Building The idea of civilizing the Orient “close to home” played an important role in both national identity building and Habsburg’s colonial mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina. To put it more concretely, efforts to establish the identity of Austria-Hungary as a “state-nation” (in the sense outlined above) actually paved the way for its colonial ventures. However, both undertakings were stimulated by the so-called backward, undercivilized, and oriental periphery directly beyond Habsburg’s borders. Therefore, politicians and opinion leaders generated two forms of orientalism. On the one hand, they utilized orientalist values as a tool for cultural division, European self-valorization, and as a means of creating distance between the civilized self and the oriental other. Helfert, for instance, imposed two binary oppositions: between Ottoman tyranny and a native Slavic identity, and between the backwardness of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s peoples and Habsburg’s superiority. The Orient was perceived as an object of hatred and of threat. At the same time Helfert emphasized the experiences that the orientalized native Slavs shared with the Occident. The Muslims of Bosnia-Herzegovina were perceived as having the same ethnic origin as the Catholic and Orthodox Slavs, and they shared languages and ideas.

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These “shared experiences” might have blurred distinctions between the Habsburg’s state national activists and the hated Turks. However, the example of Bosnia-Herzegovina shows that the “shared experiences” were taken as an opportunity and used as an argument for the idea of “civilizing mission,” which was effectively a colonial venture. This duality and ambiguity—the Orient as both a threat and as an opportunity66— might be seen as a genuinely Habsburg form of orientalist discourse, used as it was both to underpin the empire’s colonial mission and defend its political and cultural borders. Beyond this discourse, the idea of nationalism was also an important argument for taking over Bosnia-Herzegovina. By establishing colonial rule, the Habsburg state administrators could demonstrate the superiority of the conservative idea of inclusive state nationalism over the language-based idea of exclusive, though progressive, cultural nationalism. In order to advance the state national vision of identity, Habsburg’s authorities invented a distinct Bosnian civilization, which was conceived of as unaffected by both Ottomanism and languagebased Slavic nationalism. By starting the colonial venture, the Habsburg authorities sought to overcome the danger of both the emergence of a large Southern Slav state directly beyond its borders and of national unrest within its borders in regions where Slav conationals lived: Slavic national rivalry and rising Pan-Slavism could have destabilized the whole region. The ultimate goal was the consolidation of the state national idea by securing political stability, and colonial rule promised pacification. However, the colonial mission was limited in time. It would be fulfilled, once the undercivilized periphery was brought up to the level of Western civic order. At that point the good oriental would be ready for absorption into the pluricultural Habsburg orbit.67 Language-based rivalry would be appeased and the bad Turk expelled from Slavic territory forever. By 1908, thirty years after the occupation, this vision had almost become reality when the annexation of the Ottoman provinces finally took place.

V. Bulwark versus Bridge In the late Habsburg Empire, the Orient “close to home” turned out to be the territories desired by the empire as part of its colonial and cultural missionary ambitions. However, the “distant” Orient was dealt with quite differently. Helfert advocated the position of a clear demarcation from that “distant” Orient, denouncing those who would build bridges to the Orient as “Lobpreiser der Türken” and calling them “Turkophile.”68 Despite building bridges, the “Turkophilen” were also clearly advancing the idea of civilizing the Orient, especially the more remote provinces of the Ottoman Empire: “Oesterreich’s Mission als Träger europäischer Cultur und Sitte nach dem benachbarten Osten

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schwebt uns vor Augen.” At the same time they saw it as their challenge, “die Beziehungen zwischen dem Osten und der abendländischen und besonders der deutschen Cultur im Allgemeinen zu vermitteln und dem Handel und Verkehr zwischen dem Oriente und OesterreichUngarn insbesondere belebend anzuregen und zu entwickeln.”69 However, they undermined and threatened the long-standing idea of Vienna as a bulwark. Or—in other words—they threatened the integrity of the “distant” Orient model and undermined its role, which consisted in generating new scenarios of menace and victory by keeping up the Angst-inducing narrative of the early modern foe. Helfert would presumably have ascribed the derogatory label “Turkophil” to the patrons, administrators, and supporters—civil servants, scholars, scientists, entrepreneurs—of Vienna’s Oriental Museum. Rudolf von Scala—a brother of Arthur, who was the director of the museum, which opened in 1875—presented one central mission of this institution in his lecture Über die wichtigsten Beziehungen des Orients zum Occidente in Mittelalter und Neuzeit, which he delivered at the Oriental Museum in 1887. On the one hand, he advocated unifying East and West under the roof of one museum and the exhibition of the world-embracing entanglements of culture and economy. On the other hand, he characterized the area in between in a manner reminiscent of Kállay’s “zones of transition” (“Uebergangsstätte Ungarn”).70 However, contrary to Kállay, Scala located these zones in the “distant” Orient. In his address he characterized them as “Uebergangsgebilde von bunter occidentalischorientalischer Färbung”71 and as an area of desire that would provide undreamed-of commercial possibilities for Habsburg entrepreneurship: “The Ottoman menace,” as Maureen Healy put it, “has become an Ottoman opportunity.”72 Scala took a position that Helfert strictly repudiated, namely, the idea of Austria and Vienna as mediating between Orient and Occident. Helfert advocated Vienna’s long-standing role as a bulwark of the Occident against the Orient. Despite the weak position of the late Ottoman Empire, the Turks still posed a menace for Catholic Europe, or as Helfert wrote: “Der Türke steht der europäischen Civilisation heute noch ebenso fremd gegenüber, wie vor fünfthalbhundert Jahren.”73 The Turks had nothing in common with Europe and Helfert blamed the “Turkophilen” for promoting trade activities with this essentialized and treacherous other—one who was guilty of “Wortbruch,” “Treulosigkeit,” and “Verletzung der Verträge.”74 Whereas Helfert was drawing clear lines of division, Scala was building bridges by advancing cultural and commercial exchange activities within the self-proclaimed zones of transition between Orient and Occident. However, ultimately even the so-called Turkophilen adhered to certain orientalist modes of thought: They took these spaces of transition as both the starting and the target point of their civilizing missions: “Aus

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dem Westen dringe der Erkenntnis Flamme in den Osten ein—‘Ex occidente in orientem lux’!”75

VI. Conclusion Two forms of orientalism have been discussed in this chapter: an orientalism that was related to the “distant” Orient and one that concerned the Orient “close to home.” As shown by the literature of the last decades of the nineteenth century, one form was used for establishing and preserving insurmountable divides between Occident and Orient, thus generating new scenarios of menace and victory for self-valorization through devaluation of the other and for the stabilization of European collective identity. The function of the other form consisted in promoting the idea of Austria-Hungary’s civilizing mission that in the Orient “close to home” could legitimize the occupation of two Ottoman provinces. In the “distant” Orient it could legitimize the promotion of trade activities between the Habsburg and the Ottoman Empires. Habsburg orientalist discourse imposed two binary oppositions: between Ottoman backwardness (the “distant” Orient) and Ottoman tyranny and Slavic nativeness (Orient “close to home”), and between Bosnia and Herzegovina’s backwardness and Habsburg superiority. Based on these orientalist discourses, Austro-Hungarian politicians and opinion leaders imagined areas they called zones of transition. The promotion of the idea of “shared spaces” was an integral part of the Austro-Hungarian colonial and civilizing mission. Such spaces of transition—like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire—were invented and located in both the Orient “close to home” and (more rarely) the “distant” Orient. One form of Habsburg orientalism corresponds to Edward Said’s notion of “imperial divide,” the other differs from his use of the term “shared experiences.” However, the idea of experiences and spaces shared by both colonizers and the colonized was utilized immediately after the Habsburg monarchy started its cultural mission in the Orient “close to home.” Although Said’s ideas of “sharing” and “dividing” can indeed characterize central European orientalism, they are not applied in this chapter in Said’s sense. In central Europe the discursive strategy of “shared experiences” was consciously used for colonizing and civilizing purposes, whereas the discursive strategy of “imperial divide” was not used to a colonializing end, but for the purpose of inclusion and exclusion, strengthening the inner cohesion of social and political groups. The demands of central European politics around 1900 are too intricate to be analyzed in terms of the rather dichotomous and static concept of orientalism on which Said published his acclaimed book in 1978, and which he takes up again in his article of 2003. The analysis of central European orientalism has to take into

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account that what is spoken of and imagined as the Orient depends to a large extent on the person who speaks.

Notes 1

This chapter refers to the orientalism of policymakers of the late Habsburg monarchy. In his recent book Imperial Messages: Orientalism as Self-Critique in the Habsburg Fin de Siècle (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011), Robert Lemon focuses on fiction authors. Whereas in literary discourses orientalist tropes and topoi were employed to engage in self-critique, in public and political discourses, we contend, this use of orientalism is rather unknown. Suzanne Marchand’s German Orientalism in the Age of Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) is mainly concerned with German oriental scholars, who applied multifaceted approaches to their objects of study. However, the findings of both authors permit a similar conclusion to the argument of this chapter: orientalism, as practiced in central Europe, is no “single, shared discourse” (Marchand, German Orientalism, xxi). 2

Edward Said: “Always on the Top,” in London Review of Books 25, no. 6 (20 March 2003), 4. See also http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n06/edward-said/alwayson-top (accessed 15 June 2012). See also Edward W. Said: Orientalism: Western Conceptions of the Orient (London: Penguin Books, 1978).

3

Said, “Always on the Top,” 4.

4

Rudolf von Scala: Über die wichtigsten Beziehungen des Orients zum Occidente in Mittelalter und Neuzeit gehalten im Orientalischen Museum am 26. Jänner 1887 (Vienna: Verlag des Orientalischen Museums; Reisser & Werthner, 1887), 5. 5

See Johannes Feichtinger and Johann Heiss, eds., Geschichtspolitik und “Türkenbelagerung,” Kritische Studien zur “Türkenbelagerung” 1 (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2013); and Johann Heiss and Johannes Feichtinger, eds., Der Erinnerte Feind, Kritische Studien zur “Türkenbelagerung” 2 (Vienna: Mandelbaum, 2013). 6

Obituaries “Pfarrer Deckert †,” Das Vaterland (Abendblatt), March 23, 1901, 2. “† Pfarrer Dr. Joseph Deckert,” Neue Freie Presse, March 23, 1901, 2–3. 7

Joseph Deckert, Türkennoth und Judenherrschaft: 3 Conferenzreden (Vienna: Verlag des Sendboten des Heiligen Joseph 1893; reprinted 1894 in three editions). 8

Joseph Deckert, Ein Ritualmord—Actenmässig nachgewiesen (Dresden: Glöß, 1893).

9

Joseph Deckert, Juden raus? 8 Conferenzreden (Vienna: H. Kirsch, 1896).

10

The signs bearing his name were finally removed in 1989 after a series of protests. 11

“Joseph Alexander Frh. von Helfert (1820–1910),” in Österreichisches Biographisches Lexikon (ÖBL), 1815–1950, vol. 2, 1959, 256–57.

12 Frhr. [Joseph] von Helfert, Bosnisches (Vienna: Manz, 1879). Helfert wrote this booklet without ever having visited Bosnia and Herzegovina.

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13

[Joseph] Freiherr von Helfert, Die weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung des Wiener Siegs von 1683: Vortrag, gehalten am 2. September 1883 in der Festversammlung des katholisch-politischen Casinos der inneren Stadt (Vienna: F. Eipeldauer, 1883).

14

“Kállay von Nagy—Kálló Béni (1839–1903),” in ÖBL, vol. 3, 1965, 196.

15

Benjamin von Kállay, Ungarn an den Grenzen des Orients und des Occidents (Budapest: Khór & Wein, 1883). 16

“Klinkowström, P. Max von (1819–1896),” in ÖBL, vol. 3, 1965, 413–14.

17

P. Max von Klinkowström, “Gott—Der Retter Wiens im Jahre 1683: Schlußpredigt gehalten am Abend des 10. September 1883,” in Blätter der Erinnerung an die im September 1883 in Wien abgehaltene kirchliche Säcularfeier der Rettung Wiens aus der Türkennoth im Jahre 1683 (Vienna: Mayer, 1883), 132–49. 18

Oesterreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient, ed. Orientalisches Museum, Vienna 1 (1875)–44 (1918).

19

Scala, Über die wichtigsten Beziehungen.

20

“Scala, Rudolf von (1845–1909),” in ÖBL, vol. 10, 1990, 10–11.

21

Helfert, Weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung, 6, 21, 30; and Klinkowström, “Gott,” 132. 22

Helfert, Weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung, 5.

23

Deckert, Türkennoth und Judenherrschaft, 5, 10.

24

Ibid., 8, 10. Helfert, Weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung, 4–6, 21; and Klinkowström, “Gott,” 132, 146.

25

Helfert, Weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung, 28–29.

26

Cölestin Joseph [Ganglbauer], “Hirtenschreiben des Hochwürdigsten Herrn Fürsterzbischofs von Wien,” in Blätter der Erinnerung, 20, 23. 27

Deckert, Türkennoth und Judenherrschaft, 5. Helfert, Weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung, 27. 28

Klinkowström, “Gott,” 132, 134, 147.

29

Ibid., 134.

30

Ibid.

31

Ibid.

32 33

[Ganglbauer], “Hirtenschreiben,” 20. Klinkowström, “Gott,” 132.

34

Deckert, Türkennoth und Judenherrschaft, 8, 10. Helfert, Weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung, 4–6, 21. Klinkowström, “Gott,” 132, 146. 35

[Ganglbauer], “Hirtenschreiben, 20.

36

See Johann Heiss, “Orientalismus,” in Lexikon der Globalisierung, ed. Fernand Kreff, Eva-Maria Knoll, Andre Gingrich (Bielefeld: Transcript 2011), 319–23. 37

Helfert, Weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung, 5.

38

Ibid., 5.

39

Ibid., 4–6, 21. Klinkowström, “Gott,” 144.

40

Klinkowström, “Gott,” 132–33; and Helfert, Weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung, 6.

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41

Helfert, Weltgeschichtliche Bedeutung, 4.

42

Ibid., 5.

43

Klinkowström, “Gott,” 144.

44

Ibid.

45

See Robin Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), vii–xii, 26–29, and 251–58; Robert J. Donia: “The Proximate Colony: Bosnia-Herzegovina under Austro-Hungarian Rule,” www.kakanien.ac.at (published online 11 Sept 2007; accessed 15 May 2012); and Bojan Aleksov: “Habsburg’s ‘Colonial Experiment’ in Bosnia and Hercegovina Revisited,” in Schnittstellen: Gesellschaft, Nation, Konflikt und Erinnerung in Südosteuropa: Festschrift für Holm Sundhausen zum 65. Geburtstag, ed. Ulf Brunnbauer, Andreas Helmedach, Stefan Troebst (Munich: Oldenbourg Verlag, 2007), 205–11. 46

The relationship between the Habsburg monarchy and the two Ottoman provinces, Bosnia and Herzegovina, was already termed a “colonial” one around 1900, using words like “Ersatzkolonie.” Today only the kind of colonialism is reassessed differently. The Ottoman provinces are termed a “proximate colony” (Donia) “semi-colony,” “quasi-colony” (Detrez), or as an object of “colonial governmentality” (Aleksov). See Donia, “The Proximate Colony”; Aleksov, “Habsburg’s ‘Colonial Experiment’”; Raymond Detrez, “Colonialism in the Balkans: Historic Realities and Contemporary Perceptions,” www.kakanien.ac.at (published 15 May 2002); and Evelyn Kolm, Die Ambitionen Österreich-Ungarns im Zeitalter des Hochimperialismus, Europäische Hochschulschriften, Series III, vol. 900 (Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 2001), 235–53. The Habsburg monarchy was in fact an empire without a marked colonial tradition. However, it was nevertheless strongly shaped by colonial attitudes and practices, and it also strove for imperialist goals using the widespread orientalist discourse. Recently, Bosnia and Herzegovina was classified also from a postcolonial perspective as Habsburg’s only and late colony. See Johannes Feichtinger, Ursula Prutsch, Moritz Csáky, eds., Habsburg Postcolonial: Machtstrukturen und kollektives Gedächtnis, Gedächtnis—Erinnerung— Identität 2 (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2003). 47

See Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism, 28.

48

See Johannes Feichtinger, “Orientalismus und Nationalismus: Abgrenzungskonzepte in der Habsburgermonarchie und in der frühen Republik Österreich,” in Zonen der Begrenzung: Aspekte kultureller und räumlicher Grenzen in der Moderne, ed. Gerald Lamprecht, Ursula Mindler, Heidrun Zettelbauer (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2012), 187–202. 49

Reference here to the title of Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism.

50

Donia, “Proximate Colony,” 4.

51

See Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism, 251–58, and Aleksov, “Habsburg’s ‘Colonial Experiment,’” 205–11. 52 See Johann Heiss and Johannes Feichtinger: “Konjunkturen einer verflochtenen

Geschichte: Islam und Türken in Österreich,” in Ostarrichislam: Fragmente achthundertjähriger gemeinsamer Geschichte, ed. Amena Shakir, Gernot Galib Stanfel, Martin M. Weinberger (Vienna: New Academic Press, 2012), 68–76. 53

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54

Ibid., 240. See also ibid., 258. “Die Türken=Herrschaft war bei dem muhamedanisirten Südslaven trotz der Gemeinschaft des Cultus nie beliebt; der Osmanli wurde von jeher als ein fremdes Element angesehen.” 55

Ibid., 201.

56

Ibid., 193. “In der That, neben der Türkenfurcht zog sich . . . ein tief gehender Türkenhaß durch alle Schichten der nicht=islamitischen Bevölkerung.” 57

Ibid., 194, 265, 273.

58

Ibid., 259. “Ein . . . sehr wichtiger und günstiger Umstand ist der, daß der muslimische Bosnier und Hercegove eines Stammes mit dem katholischen und orthodoxen ist, eine und dieselbe Sprache mit ihm redet, einen großen Theil seines Ideenkreises mit ihm theilt.” 59

Ibid., 240. “Die verhältnismäßig geringe Anzahl von National=Türken Juden und Zigeunern [kann] nicht verhindern, das Land als ein durchaus slavisches, und zwar einem und demselben Slavenstamme, dem serbisch=kroatischen angehöriges zu bezeichnen.” 60

Ibid., 16.

61

Amand Freih[err] von Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, Bosnien: Das Land und seine Bewohner: Geschichtlich, geographisch, ethnographisch und social-politisch geschildert (Vienna: Zamarski, 1878), 155–56 and 190. 62

Helfert, Bosnisches, 21.

63

Kállay, Ungarn an den Grenzen, 47, 51.

64

See Okey, Taming Balkan Nationalism, 56–57, who refers to Kállay’s lecture.

65

Kállay, Ungarn an den Grenzen, 53.

66

See Maureen Healy, “1883 Vienna in the Turkish Mirror,” in Austrian History Yearbook 40 (2009): 111–13. 67

Anil Bhatti, “Heterogeneities and Homogeneities: On Similarities and Diversities,” in Understanding Multiculturalism: Central Europe and the Habsburg Experience, ed. Johannes Feichtinger and Gary B. Cohen (New York: Berghahn, 2014) (Austrian & Habsburg Studies 17), 23–71. 68

Helfert, Bosnisches, 28.

69

“Wien, 14. Januar 1875,” Oesterreichische Monatsschrift für den Orient 1 (15 January 1875): 2. 70

Kállay, Ungarn an den Grenzen, 47.

71

Scala, Über die wichtigsten Beziehungen, 5.

72

Healy, “1883 Vienna in the Turkish Mirror,” 112.

73

Helfert, Bosnisches, 30.

74

Ibid., 29.

75

Scala, Über die wichtigsten Beziehungen, 28.

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9: Modes of Orientalism in Hungarian Letters and Learning of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries Margit Köves

T

HIS CHAPTER CHARTS the varied and changing uses of orientalist material and strategies in Hungarian culture over four distinct periods, two in the nineteenth century (1800–1850, 1850–1900) and two roughly corresponding to the two halves of the twentieth century. In the romantic period in Hungarian letters, the Orient was used for the systematic mobilization of the relevant “cultural artifacts” to highlight the “specificity” of Hungary, its differences from other European nations, and the alleged mission of the Hungarian nation in Europe.1 Hungary had been a part of the Habsburg monarchy from the eighteenth century, and the Habsburg monarchy provided a special framework for the collaboration of the Hungarian aristocracy in the court and in the administration. In spite of this association, the emphasis within much of the writing considered here was on features that distinguished Hungarian from Austrian and German culture, stressing the specificity of Hungarian language and folklore. The Orient that was demarcated in Hungarian letters and learning was a fluctuating concept and its shifting geographical location and parameters adapted to the political, social, and historical concerns of the day. Several tropes and formulations from earlier periods continued in orientalist discourse in these two centuries of Hungarian engagement with the Orient. In the initial two phases the link to Hungarian nationalism is the most significant feature. Traces of this are still visible in contemporary, nonacademic, populist engagement with Hungarian prehistory (before Hungarians occupied the territory of the Carpathian Basin, present-day Hungary, in AD 986) and its relationship to the Orient. While in the first period outlined here orientalist tropes and strategies were used to highlight the specifics of a Hungarian national identity and thus became part of the project of nation building, in the second part of the nineteenth century the Orient became a concrete historical framework for representing Hungarian identity as both oriental and Western: as the other of the oriental identity. After the turn of the century the Orient figured as a thematic strand or allegory for exploring the history, birth, and

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development of the modern lyrical “I” or writing subject in Hungarian poetry and prose. This ran parallel to the treatment of the Orient as an allegory of Hungarian backwardness in essays and travelogues. In the twentieth century the Orient is drawn on in Hungarian poetry as a myth or a countermyth that served to underline Hungarian backwardness or to point to the possibility of a revolutionary upheaval.

I. Orientalism and the Dissemination of Nationalism (1800–1850) Hungarians in the early nineteenth century used the theme of the Orient for the construction of a national past in poetry, prose, political pamphlets, and art. While their Greek and Romanian neighbors and the Bulgarians could claim an antique past, there was no definite narrative of Hungarian history.2 Before the end of the nineteenth century academic history scarcely played much of a role, and in public discussions allegorical images characterize the view of history in debates about the prehistory of Hungarians.3 This section of the chapter deals with historical chronicles, which served the purpose of nation building, and it was the ideas of the German Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) that gave an impetus to the movement for the renewal of Hungarian language and the search for the predecessors of Hungarians. It will examine in detail the interconnection between nationalism and orientalist writing that lent emotional intensity to the treatment of the Orient in diaries, pamphlets, and prefaces in academic publications. The issue of national origins, the demand for a national language, and the interest in history became connected at the time of Hungarian romanticism in the early nineteenth century. By emphasizing Hungarian prehistory and the origins of the Hungarian population, the Orient appeared to be a crucial element and a strategic asset in developing the narrative of Hungarian nationalism. Elements of medieval chronicle literature, mainly the material about the Hungarian-Hun link from the Gesta Hungarorum4 in the twelfth century, were transformed and chronicle literature itself was transformed and popularized through the publication of printed calendars with narrative content. This transformation demonstrated the interplay between technology, ideology, and the geographical territory where there was a readership for these calendars. The calendars also strove to present a model of history that was on a par with or more impressive than the neighboring nations.5 Orientalist writing, imagery, and associations were part of this ideological mobilization of nationalism, or the “invention of national history,” and it was romanticism that gave rise to the decorative imagery and rhetorical expression of emotion that accompanied nationalism.6 Herder’s epoch-making book Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit (1774), especially after its Hungarian translation in 1811

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(Eszmék az emberiség történetének filozófiájához), contributed to a great extent to the discussion of the implications of geography for the role of the psyche, national language, and nationhood. It also initiated an interest in languages from the periphery of Europe. Herder’s forecast that Hungarian as a language, “lonely in the sea of Germanic and Slavic peoples,” would have to face extinction, deeply emotionalized the issue of linguistic origins and the perspectives of being a nation. The ideologically charged mobilization of the national language as a carrier of national spirit led to the suppression of Latin and also of the dialects and variations of Hungarian. The movement for the renewal of the Hungarian language7 had sought to create a phraseology and vocabulary suited to expressing the technological, administrative, and intellectual culture of the age and capable of replacing Latin and German. An important figure in the quest for the origins of the Hungarian language is Alexander Csoma de Kőrös (1784–1842), who started the search for the ancestors of the Hungarians in Asia. In the course of his studies in Göttingen, where he was a student of Johann Gottfried Eichhorn (1752–1827), he acquired the new methods and the critical spirit of biblical exegesis. Eichhorn taught Csoma the importance of Arabic historical sources in determining the origins of Hungarians. Csoma also listened to the lectures of the famous anthropologist Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (1752–1840) and the historian Julius Heinrich Klaproth (1783–1835). According to Klaproth all Ugric/Oguric people,8 including Hungarians, were related to the Uyghurs in Central Asia. Csoma also traveled throughout Asia and this had an impact on his thinking about the relationship between Hungary and the Orient. There were vested British interests at the time in Ladakh and William Moorcroft, a British agent, believed that Csoma could perform a strategically important function in Zangskar, near Ladakh, and persuaded him to go there.9 Zangskar was originally part of Western Tibet and had a tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. After reaching Zangskar in 1823 Csoma adjusted to his Tibetan surroundings and was able to relate to scholars of Tibetan Buddhism, particularly to Sangs-rgyas Phun-tshogs, and he compiled his Grammar of the Tibetan Language (1834), systematizing the vast new material he encountered. The latter proved to be his magnum opus. The clash of motives and purposes becomes apparent in the preface of his dictionary, however, where he apologizes for abandoning his original plan of finding the predecessors of the Hungarians and works instead on a philological project with universalist claims. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences, established in 1825, also subscribed to the aim of combining national cultural interests with a universalist project. Csoma presents himself as a researcher whose original purpose was “researches respecting the origins and language of Hungarians” and claims that he feels “the deepest interest” in “pursuing the inquiry” into the Hungarian language.10

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It is useful here to draw attention to the phenomenon of “print nationalism” as the connection between printing, publication, and the search for a new standardized form of the language.11 From the beginning of the nineteenth century, along with the national reform movement for cultural, political, and economic transformation, which ran from approximately 1825 to 1848, the rise of journalism, newspapers, journals, and magazines was an important development in Hungary and this process accelerated after 1825.12 Politicians demanded press freedom but the Austrian government kept an eye on all expressions of liberalism and attempted to punish and ban the expression of political opinion in newspapers. This applied to journals like Jelenkor (Our Age), where István Széchenyi, the economist who established the Hungarian Academy, played a leading role; Kritikai Lapok (Critical Notes), which was edited by József Bajza and was concerned with aesthetics and literature; and Athenaeum, which was edited by Bajza and Mihály Vörösmarty and published contemporary literature, as well as studies and articles by Vörösmarty, Miklós Jósika, and Széchenyi about education and the political system. There were nine hundred subscriptions to Athenaeum in the first year, and this number subsequently increased.13 The reading public broadened in this period and new genres, such as the serialized novel, short story, historical story, or adapted translations, most of them dealing with India or the wider Orient, also became increasingly popular.14 Orientalist tropes and images were used to underline the specific mission of Hungarians in the early nineteenth century and their prehistory in the East. In People of the East, Széchenyi claimed: “The Hungarian people have no lesser mission than to represent its specific qualities carried from its Asian cradles and never coming to blossom.”15 In a number of political studies Széchenyi drew from his experiences in the West (mainly in England) and in the East (Greece and Turkey) to support his plans for the establishment of various social institutions in Hungary. Adopting Herder’s ideas about the ages of nations, Széchenyi held that in Western Europe young nations could reach new heights with the help of technology and democratic social organization. However, he hesitated to identify Greeks and Turks as either young or old(er) nations. Széchenyi reached a turning point in November 1818 when he met the coffeehouse owner Ali Chelebi in Istanbul and wrote: “I feel a richer person, since I know him. I must laugh at this, but no man has been dearer to me than him.”16 As his moods changed and he swung from hope to pessimism he hesitated in his writing about whether Hungary would join the aged or young civilizations; in his optimistic moments he trusted that Hungary would join the “young countries.”17 Széchenyi and the reformers of the early nineteenth century, such as Miklós Wesselényi (1796–1850), Lajos Kossuth (1802–94), and

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Lajos Batthyányi (1807–49), expected the nobility to carry through the reforms—including the abolition of entailment, the gradual liberation of serfs, and the introduction of modern banking and loans—yet he wrote with irony about those “whose soft brain, watery blood, and soft bones” would not even do as manure for the fields.18 The tensions between his ideas, principles, and aversions, expressed in a form of internal speech, characterize his diary and essays. In the early phase of romanticism in Hungary, from 1821 to 1837, the public expectation was that the poet should highlight the ancient glory of the people and restore to the nation its ancient past. Mihály Vörösmarty (1800–1855) lived up to this expectation. Based on the twelfth-century Gesta Hungarorum, his first major work, The Flight of Zalán (1825), deals with the ancient history of Hungarians and their conquest of the territory that became Hungary.19 In this epic, three plots of action run parallel: (1) Zalán, the ruler of the ancient Bulgarian-Turkish people whose country lies between the Danube and the Tisza, is defeated by Árpád, the leader of the Hungarian tribes; (2) Hadúr, the national God of Hungarians, fights and conquers his rival, Ármány, who is modeled on the Zoroastrian deity Ahriman, the challenger of Ahura Mazda; (3) Ete, the young Hungarian fighter, struggles against the wicked but beautiful Bulgarian hero Csorna.20 The conversion of the Hungarians from their ancient religion to Christianity in The Flight of Zalán (1828) conveys the sense Hungarians had of being disconnected from their origins and isolated—this was also expressed in Vörösmarty’s other, shorter poems as well, for example in “Zrinyi” (1828): “Looks at the West, then with gloomy eyes looks back at the East / the Hungarian brotherless, lonely branch of its species.”21 Themes, motifs, and imagery of the Orient were used by Vörösmarty to create an oriental, pre-Christian mythology, which supported claims as to the essentially oriental origin of Hungarians that were made in the name of nationalism. In the first half of the nineteenth century the genre of prose known as “beszély” (short story) emerged within literary journals such as Athenaeum. In these India occupied an important place, especially in Miklós Jósika’s “India” short stories of the 1830s, which were based on the German sources of F. Wiese. Of these “Suttin” (1837) dealt with the theme of sati (burning of widows) and “The Pearl of the Mohil” (1837) dealt with honor killing, both in a prose rich in imagery and highly rhetorical in form. “Suttin” was published when Lord Bentinck’s Regulation on Sati was passed in 1829 and there were numerous discussions on sati in Europe. Various types of literature, including epics, newspapers, pamphlets, short stories, diaries, and academic writing grew from a mingling of nationalist, romantic, and orientalist discourses—a combination that helped to forge a sense of nation’s past and future.

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II. Hungarian Identity as the Oriental Other—Hungarian Identity against the Oriental Other (1850–1900) After the revolution and the freedom struggle in Hungary (1848–49), the role of the Orient changed within Hungarian literature. In the wake of the institutionalization of academic oriental studies, the Orient within literature ceased to function solely as the source and locus for Hungarian national history. Figuring now as the location of plot, as a source of imagery and characters within literary prose, literature on the Orient also came to offer an alternative to the Hungarian nation as a geographical and cultural space, and, aesthetically, offered new stylistic and formal possibilities for literature. In this context, these literary Orients functioned in a way that allowed the contradictions and tensions within constructions of Hungarian identity to be played out. After the ultimate failure of the freedom struggle in 1849, the Orient offered the possibility of an escape from Habsburg political repression. In Hungary, as elsewhere in Europe, the institutionalization of academic oriental studies went hand in hand with historical linguistics and classical philology. The first university appointment made in nonbiblical Eastern languages in 1865 was given to Ármin Vámbéry (1832–1913), who held the chair of Turkish and Arabic studies in Budapest. Vámbéry incorporated Hungarian prehistory, history before AD 896, into oriental studies. Like Vámbéry, Aurel Stein (1862–1943) and Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) were of Jewish origin and their work can be seen in the context of the relationship between community, nation, state, and Jewish emancipation in Hungary. Ignaz Goldziher worked on Arabic sources, elaborating the relationship between the production of material life, ideology, religion, and the state. And Aurel Stein directed excavations in Central Asia and interpreted the early Hun, Sogdian, and Uighur Turkish civilizations in the region: the nomadic Uighur tribes had overtaken settled peoples indigenous to the region and, despite the advanced culture of the latter (they had written language, organized religion, etc.), the Uighur conquerors had nevertheless imposed their highly organized political structures on their new subjects, while simultaneously assimilating their culture and achievements. This part of the chapter, however, deals with various genres of literature that presented alternative images of the Orient, specifically historical fiction after Jósika: the novels of Mór Jókai, which continued to draw on the history of Turkish occupation (1541–1686), and epic poetry that dealt with the Hun-Hungarian theme underlining an essential Hungarian identity. In some works, Hungarian identity is represented as a form of internal conflict, as two warring halves of a collective whole or family, all of which takes on tragic overtones as themes of betrayal and loss come to the fore.

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Hungarian poetry continued to utilize the Hungarian-Hun theme, but did so in this period as a Hungarian-Oriental countermyth to the German Nibelungenlied. With its theme of Hun-Germanic struggle and many elements of the Nibelung myth, János Arany’s (1817–82) epic poem The Death of Buda (1863) had an obvious parallel with HungarianAustrian relations. Arany’s tragic worldview after the failure of the freedom struggle did not permit him to recreate the holistic, homogenous world of his earlier epic poem, Toldi (1847). The Death of Buda is an important part of the Hungarian literary canon.22 Hun identity is connected in this poem with the myth of the oriental origins of Hungarians. In The Death of Buda, Buda shares his power with his brother, Attila, and their competition and maneuverings form the plot of the epic. Hungarian literature in Arany’s view had a strong oral tradition of the epic. In Arany’s study Hungarian Naïve Epics (1857), the epic is interpreted as a reflection of the worldview of the collective community of Hungarian commoners and nobility.23 Naïve folk epics reflect the erstwhile mythology and collective memory of the nation. They are collective creations, and their originality is a characteristic of national literature. In The Death of Buda, Arany attempted to create a work close to the original Hungarian naïve epic. While The Death of Buda carries many elements of The Flight of Zalán (elements of mythology such as the God of the Huns, the Hungarian Hadúr, the wicked Ármány), the contrast between Hungarian-Hun and (notably Germanic) Goth characters and their destinies shape the epic poem. The innocence and recklessness of Buda and Attila cannot prevent the cunning, plotting, and interference of the Goths Krimhilde and Detre. There is a clear element of contrast between the Western Goth characters and the Hun-Hungarian characters. Buda decides to share his power with his brother, Attila, but he is unable to dismiss the allegations made by the Goth Detre against his brother, Attila. The other protagonist, Attila, saves Buda’s life on a hunting expedition, but he is powerless to control his anger when the miraculous “sword of God” is stolen by Buda, and he kills his brother. Aspects of archaic epics and tragedy are combined and concepts of crime and punishment also play an important role in the development of the plot.24 The work of Mór Jókai is also of significance in Hungarian orientalist culture: dubbed the “storyteller of the nation,”25 his novels on Turkish and Indian themes were very popular in his homeland. Jókai’s career as a novelist spans almost six decades, from the middle of the nineteenth century up to the beginning of the twentieth. His novels The Golden Age of Transylvania (1852), The Turkish Age in Hungary (1852), The White Rose (1854), and The Last Days of Janissaries (1854), written in the 1850s after the failure of the freedom struggle when Jókai had in many senses taken over the literary scene in Hungary (1850–54), turned to the history of seventeenth-century Hungary. In so doing, Jókai referred to

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Victor Hugo’s Les Orientales and Byron’s writings, and he was also a regular reader of Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall’s articles in the Allgemeine Zeitung, which included reports about political events in Turkey and translations from Turkish literature and Turkish historical works. He also took up the theme of the (Turkish) Orient; after the failure of the freedom struggle in 1849 a large number of Hungarian emigrants settled in Turkey, and the fact that the Turkish Empire extended hospitality to his exiled friends was an important factor in his depiction of Turkish characters as positively connoted “hosts.” The occupation and liberation of the fort of Buda (1541–1686) is, however, considered as a period of Turkish rule over Hungary, although various parts of Hungary were under Turkish rule from 1521 to 1716. The relationship between Hungary (and Jókai) and the Ottoman Empire was, then, highly ambivalent, and its ambivalence characterizes Jókai’s depiction of Turkish characters. Jókai transformed and modernized the seventeenth-century historical plot of The Golden Age of Transylvania with scenes of an oriental subplot similar to Flaubert’s Salammbô. Yet here we cannot speak of orientalism in the same sense as in the case of French or British orientalism. In The Golden Age of Transylvania the Turks are present in Hungarian lands. This has been called “defensive orientalism” by Antal Bókay and is a concept that expresses defeat, repression, and failure of occidental culture, rather than its conquest of and victory over the Orient. This is distinct from orientalism in Britain and France, which went hand in hand with colonization of oriental territory. In the context of Hungary, this “defensive orientalism” first of all plays a role in the formation of collective Hungarian identity and points to the dangers of intermixing and hybridity.26 In chapter five of The Golden Age of Transylvania Kuchuk Basha takes his Hungarian wife and their son, Feriz Beg, to the fort of Pál Béldi, who is the local landlord. Kuchuk Basha speaks about his marriage to Béldi, pointing out that he is “devoted” to his wife, emphasizing that he ascribes value to their relationship in the “European” manner and wants Béldi’s protection for his wife and child in case he is wounded in battle. It turns out that the two women, Béldi’s wife, Zsuzsanna, and the wife of Kuchuk Basha, Katalin Kállay, know each other through their families. The answers Katalin gives to the questions Zsuzsanna asks (about the number of wives Kuchuk Basha has and his relationship to Christianity) reveal that Kuchuk Basha is one of the supporters of Christians in Turkey and that he had personally liberated many Hungarian men from slavery. Jókai emphasizes the oriental characteristics in Katalin’s looks, the color of her face, her gaze that “almost burns,” her thick, black eyebrows, which touch each other, her pulsating blood that “shows on her lips” and the “pink nostrils of her nose,” which are signs of her hot temperament.27 Her silk caftan, yellow golden belt, red silk pants, and yellow slippers are also described by Jókai in great detail. Her fatal change is probably due

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to her Muslim husband and her Turkish surroundings. In her depiction, in her looks, and the fact that she is mentioned by her Hungarian family name while Béldi’s wife is known only by her husband’s name, we see Katalin Kállay’s special status as both Hungarian and Turkish, oriental and Western. In a reverse situation in chapter 8, we see Azraële, the concubine of Korzar Beg, falling in love with a Hungarian fighter, Balassa, and betraying Korzar Beg. Azraële’s extreme beauty is enhanced by her insatiable desire, her restlessness, her animality; she is depicted in the first scene lying with a panther in the palatial background of the harem.28 Jókai was interested in the arts and he also had some training in drawing and painting.29 He was influenced by the Frenchman Jean-AugustDominique Ingres, whose orientalist paintings depicted the curves of the female body in bathing scenes set before a background of falling drapery, jewellery, and pomp in works such as Turkish Bath (1863), The Grand Odalisque (1814), and Odalisque and the Slave (1842), all framed by the implied male gaze of the painter-subject. A number of the visual elements of Jókai’s descriptions can be characterized by intensely visual representations also characteristic of Ingres’s paintings—one thinks, for example of the slaveowner’s shop on the Danube in The Turkish World in Hungary.30 The ornamentalism and grandiosity of orientalist scenes in Jókai’s novels also anticipate late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Secession art.31 Whereas the institutionalization of oriental studies had raised a number of questions about the state, the individual, and the community in an academic context, in literature the ambivalences surrounding Hungarian identity were brought out with greater vehemence in The Death of Buda. There, Buda and Attila are the oriental characters, while Detre and Krimhilde are the manipulating Westerners/Germans. In Jókai’s novels Hungarians face the oriental Turks, but the relationship is often presented as more complex than a simple dualistic opposition of “good” and “bad.” At the same time, however, these developments also marked a shift from the uses of orientalist ideas and images for the liberal ideology of nation building to its use in the creation of a more homogeneous Hungarian identity with a leading role in central and eastern Europe.

III. After 1900—The Formulation of Individual Identity against the Background of Community and the Historical Past At the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries the Orient appears as an extended allegory within the spheres of literature, fine arts, and architecture. After 1867, the compromise with the Habsburgs and the formation of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, the idea of the oriental

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origins of the Hungarian nation lost its nation building role in liberal national ideology. That role was gradually taken over by a national imperial ideology with a vision of homogenizing Hungarian rule over the other nationalities of the Habsburg Empire. In the millennium celebrations of 1896 to commemorate the conquest of the territory of Hungary by the Hungarian tribes in 896, that vision was displayed with great pomp in a manner that underscored the oriental element.32 The theory of oriental origins also lost its academic credibility after the linguistic debate between József Budenz and Ármin Vámbéry (called in Hungarian linguistics the “Ugrian-Turkish War” of 1869–89), when Budenz proved the FinnoUgrian linguistic relationship beyond doubt.33 In Hungary—though also more widely within the Habsburg monarchy, Germany, and elsewhere in Europe—fin de siècle literature, art, and philosophy assimilated and synthesized knowledge that was being opened up by modern editions and translations of Indian literary and sacred texts.34 As a result, knowledge about the East proliferated and diversified in Hungary. This part of the chapter will deal with the depiction of the duality of self in the poetry of Endre Ady, Lőrinc Szabó, Sándor Weöres, and Dezső Kosztolányi, and with the investigation of subjectivity in Balázs’s tales and Lukács’s early essays. In Ady’s essay “In the Margin of an Unknown Corvina Codex” (1905), the East serves as an allegory of the living conditions of the Hungarian majority. After 1900, contact between India and Hungary increased and Tagore’s visit to Hungary lent impetus to the visits of Hungarians to India. All of this led to a wide range of responses to the East and India. A number of travelogues and novels were published, for example Géza Gárdonyi’s Eclipse of the Crescent Moon above Eger (1899), which shaped twentieth-century public knowledge in Hungary about India. The dissemination of orientalist tropes went on in popular works such as Gárdonyi’s novel, which is linked to the historical accounts of Turkish occupation of Hungary and to the millennium celebrations. Such tendencies also extended to poetry and essayistic writing. In Endre Ady’s (1877–1918) work, for example in the poems “Lotus” (1903) and “On the Banks of the Tisza” (1905), allegories of the Orient as the “lotus flower” and the “Ganges,” respectively, came to figure the inner world of subjectivity alienated from the modern external world. In “Lotus,” for example, the lotus flower stands for strangeness, for “the alien”: Lotus flower, lotus flower Behold, I kiss your sacred chalice My soul begins to cloud and it rains a bitter shower Lotus flower, lotus flower. . . .35

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In the first stanza of the poem the metamorphosis of the allegory can be seen from the “kiss of the chalice” to the evolution of the soul to “cloud” and “shower.” Ady’s poem expresses the sense of decline and “decay” in response to the mixture of new capitalism and feudalism. In the poem “On the Banks of the Tisza,” the past on the banks of the Ganges is contrasted with the present on the banks of the Tisza, the most symbolically charged river in the territory of Hungary:36 I have come from the banks of the Ganges where I dreamt in the light of a southern noon A large blue-bell is my heart and young, vibrant is my power. Village well, mill race, battle-axe. Wasteland, alarums, coarse hands wild kisses, idiots, stranglers of dreams. What am I doing on the banks of the Tisza?

The two stanzas of the poem stand in opposition. The Ganges is depicted as a “young, vibrant power,” characterized by the “large bluebell,” while the Tisza is associated with “wasteland,” “coarse hands,” “wild kisses,” “idiots,” and “stranglers of dreams,” reflecting a split between the external surroundings and the inner world of the speaker. “On the Banks of the Tisza” demonstrates the appropriation of the alien in both a specific and general way, as expressed through the use of orientalist images and locations. Ady’s mythic figures in other poems also project this appropriation in the context of capitalism and feudal administration, for example, in the image of “the lost horseman,” “Lord Swinehead,” or “the black piano.”37 Ady’s essay “In the Margin of an Unknown Corvina Codex” (1905) was written in the context of the millennium celebrations of 1896, which involved a mixture of large-scale commissions and construction projects (for public and private buildings, roads, squares, statues, public transportation, exhibition halls, etc.). The essay consists of motifs, which are also present in Ady’s poems, such as the Hungarian wasteland, fallow land, Europe, and the Orient.38 In the two genres, poetry and essay, the values attached to the Occident and Orient are different. While in the poems the allegories of the Orient project the inner world of the speaker, in the essay they express the social and political division between East and West within Hungary: the Orient within Hungary represents the real economic and social condition of the majority, who live “in a filthy brutish existence,” while a “few pharaohs” (IMCC, 84), a privileged social elite, build “castles in the air, all make-believe,”(ibid., 83) isolating themselves culturally in enclaves within which material living conditions are more in line with modern Europe. The essay deals with the potential for the creation of

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art, the loss of such potential owing to the miserable, straitened living conditions and a lack of education that was endemic, and the frustration of those “few blind fools” (ibid., 84) who waste their talents. It presents Hungary as a “Ferry-Land” that crawls between Orient and Occident, “but more readily to return back again” to the Orient (ibid., 83). “In the Margin of an Unknown Corvina Codex” presents the Orient as a negative force that holds back Hungary, a transitional Ferry-Land between Occident and Orient, from development. The theme of India asserts itself in Hungarian Secession writing, where the duality of the self becomes important and changes of conventions of time and space take place in the narrative. An example of this is Béla Balázs’s (1884–1949) early work, such as his poems in On the Ship of Tristan (1916) and his narrative prose in Seven Tales (1917). Around 1910 Balázs, who later became a film theorist, was interested in theosophy, attended the meetings of the Theosophical Society, read translations of Indian texts, and in 1917 wrote an Indian tale, The Three Faithful Princesses (Hindu Tale). The early essays of Georg Lukács (1885–1971), some of them included in the collection Soul and Form, use terms and concepts referring to Radha, Krishna, the Vedas, the caste system, and the Buddha, all in an attempt to break out of the fixed language and conceptual framework of Kantian ethics. In the essay “Longing and Form,” about Charles Luis Phillipe’s novel Marie Donadieau, for example, serenity and inner harmony is achieved in the novel because (Phillipe’s) “cult of the strong hero is transformed into Buddhist pity—a Christianity without damnation.”39 In both Balázs’s and Lukács’s work, then, oriental concepts were used to explore aspects of philosophically connoted subjectivity, for which adequate concepts did not exist in Western philosophy. There were other elaborations of the Orient, such as Eclipse of the Crescent Moon above Eger (1899–1901), a novel first published serially by Géza Gárdonyi (1863–1922), dealing with the defense of the Eger fort in the sixteenth century and the friendship and love of two young Hungarians, Gergely Bornemissza and Éva Cecey. This novel is a typical instance of defensive orientalism, as in the case of Jókai. When the novel was written Hungary no longer had any direct connection with the Turks, yet Eclipse of the Crescent Moon above Eger is based on the opposition of Turks and Hungarians, East and West. Hungarian identity is articulated in opposition to that of the enemy, the alien Turks, the other in contrast to Hungarian identity, and the various characters can be distinguished by their political or psychological relationship to the Turks. The two Hungarian children, Gergely and Éva, marry in defiance of all difficulties and intrigues (both Turkish and Hungarian) and participate in the defense of the Eger fort. They avail themselves of the presence and service of other groups (for example, Gypsies, working women, and others), who

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have a subordinate role in the construction of Hungarian identity. Eclipse of the Crescent Moon above Eger focuses on national identity and not on the individual, but it continues to be significant for the public imagination today—it is still part of the school curriculum and is compulsory reading in third grade.40 Travel writing is an important genre for circulating knowledge to a wide readership. By the 1920s there was already a long tradition of Hungarian travelogues about the East. In the early nineteenth century Széchenyi was interested in Europeans who lived in Constantinople.41 From the middle of the nineteenth century illustrated travelogues, many of them luxuriously printed documents, became fashionable for upperclass consumption.42 By the end of the nineteenth century the discourse about India percolated down to public knowledge, journalism, family magazines, and popular novels. One of the most precise travelogues concerning India is by Mária Fáy (1845–1917), whose travel writing depicted her surroundings—the fruits, vegetation, and flora; the conditions on the ship and her cotravelers are related in an introspective manner, as in a diary. She notes the “suspicion” with which she was treated as a person who was not British. In the course of her own travels, neither the locals nor local issues are discussed, except with one friendly and honest guide.43 In the Hungarian poetry of the 1920s and 1930s representations of the Orient again took on new aspects and functions. Lőrinc Szabó (1900– 1957), Dezső Kosztolányi (1885–1936), and Sándor Weöres (1913–89) translated Indian, Chinese, and Japanese poetry. The aim of their translations was not to transfer texts seamlessly from one language to another but to reimagine the originals and in so doing attain to a revitalized state of creative-poetic subjectivity. Their translations are virtually independent creations, which are relevant for the work of each poet. In the poetry of Szabó and Weöres after World War I the Orient, in the form of Buddhist thought, for instance, was used to represent transformations from the individual subject or lyrical “I” to the collective plural subject, a kind of lyrical “we.” Their poetry experiments with the representation of the temporal, compressing extended time into highly concentrated moments or accelerating its passage, and connects this to the emergence of a new relationship between self and other, subject and object. Szabó’s original poetry contains several poems that were inspired by Buddhism. In the 1930s he entitled his collection of poetry on Buddhism On the Palm of Buddha.44 Poems by Szabó and Weöres avoid self-reflexive thought through the narrative-dramatic arrangement of the poems: these poems do not return to dwell explicitly upon the lyrical “I,” but are directed to and remain with the world of objects. Weöres’s first attempts with the new arrangement, as in Le Journal (1953),45 link the Danube at Sztálinváros and an imagined Ganges in Debrecen, where Sárika walks on the banks in her oriental sarong with an umbrella. The vulgarity of a surrounding purely inhabited

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by men in Sztálinváros is marked by the Danube, whereas the Ganges stands for fine art and poetry. The visit of the Bengali polymath Tagore (Rabindranath Thakur, 1861–1941) to Hungary in 1926 was accompanied by media reactions that heralded the arrival of this “sage of India,” this “king of the poets,” and this “Goethe of the East,” but it also gave an impulse to a new reception of Eastern, and particularly Indian, culture.46 After World War I, conversely, a number of Hungarian Indologists also went to India. Gyula Germanus (1884–1979), Rózsa Hajnóczy’s husband, spent three years (1929–1932) in Shantiniketan at the invitation of Tagore, in an attempt to introduce Arabic into the university. One result of their three-year stay was the novel Bengal Fire (1944),47 which is supposed to have been written by Germanus, who, however, claimed to have based it on Rózsa Hajnóczy’s diary. In Bengal Fire the plot develops around the love triangle of Tagore’s secretary, Amiya C. Chakravarty, his Dutch wife, Haimanti, and a German visitor at the university, Gertrud Rüdiger. Nationality is an important element in this novel, which reflects a middle-class woman’s point of view about the surroundings, the romance, politics, weather, and hygiene of the East. Apart from Shantiniketan, Germanus and his wife visited other parts of India, including Delhi and Kashmir, as well as Gandhi’s Sabarmati ashram in Gujarat. The novel contains excellent caricatures of various personalities and displays the sympathy and partiality of the couple for Muslims. In Rózsa Hajnóczy’s letters home to her friends, Ila and Irma, we hear the same voice as in the novel, desperate about the heat and the uniformity of food.48 The narrator also becomes tense about political agitation, but she observes that charateristic British steadfastness and discipline serve to put down rebellion and keep India in Britsh hands. Bengal Fire also reflects Rózsa Hajnóczy’s and Germanus’s sense of exclusion in their relationship with the British, which is similar to the experiences of other Hungarians, who felt that “suspicion” surrounded them. Ervin Baktay’s (1890–1963) travelogue My Years in India (1938) is the work of a well-informed orientalist who “revealed” India to generations of Hungarians for the first time. However, like Germanus and Hajnóczy he was in the first instance a Hungarian in India. He mentions this in connection with the Maharaja of Patiala, whom he, “the unknown Hungarian,” could not meet without a letter of recommendation.49 In spite of the fact that in the beginning of the book Baktay claims the futility and “foolishness of generalizations” (43), he sets up categories of ethnic groups and caste and proceeds from one to the other: “The Parsees,” “The modern Hindu,” and the “Anglo-Indians.” Baktay also introduces politics in his discussion of the choice of a way of life for “the Western alien” (85), who wants to study in India. He considers it “tasteless” (86) to have intimate contact with the most extreme anti-British circles of Indian politics, because this would create “suspicion” among

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the British and, as he adds, it would create “one-sidedness” (86) that would be an obstacle to one’s studies. Baktay himself hastens to tell us that C. F. Andrews, Gandhi’s main collaborator, was an Englishman (86). Baktay is also the translator of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, Gandhi’s speeches, and Tagore’s works. Among the books authored by him, The Art of India (1958) is an original and influential work, which shows care and love in the discussion of the details of various works of art. The younger generation of poets and writers, for example János Háy and Gábor Lanczkor, tell how they read Baktay’s work as schoolboys and how his work on India attracted them to the subcontinent.50 The proliferation and diversification of writing and knowledge about the East and India in the first half of the twentieth century led to a large collection of writing, from which only some works will be considered in the following, final section. The Orient was used in this period for the presentation of individual identity, as in Ady’s poetry or Béla Balázs’s tales, or to facilitate the investigation of subjectivity in Lukács’s early essays. In the poetry of Lőrinc Szabó and Sándor Weöres, themes and the geography of the Orient aided the creation of an object-centered poetry without a self-reflexive return to the lyrical “I.” Fáy’s, Hajnóczy’s, and Baktay’s travelogues, besides demonstrating a great range of interests and personal reflection, dealt with the issue of being Hungarian, which in the course of staying in the East meant to be treated with suspicion because they were not British. Ady’s essay uses the East as an allegory of backwardness, in contrast with his poetry, where it is “young” and “vibrant.” Gárdonyi’s novel delves into the theme of the Turkish legacy in Hungary and creates his “imagined community” of a nation of Hungarians against this background.51

IV. The Orient as Myth and Countermyth In the 1970s and 1980s Hungarian poets such as Gábor Garai, Ottó Orbán, Ferenc Juhász, and the editor and critic László Kéry visited India with diverse new approaches to writing about the Orient that differed from earlier traditions. These visits took place in the political coordinates of the Cold War world order when India was a member of the Non-Aligned Movement. These poets came with the complex intellectual background of Hungarian-Indian contacts, the childhood experience of World War II, and the relative social and economic equality of the 1960s and 1970s. They also came with a political curiosity of what the new India was about, what the congress and the communist parties represented after the end of the British Empire. India was a space where they could afford to develop a relatively independent understanding. This section examines the treatment of India in works by Gábor Garai (1929–87) and Ferenc Juhász (1928–). Garai’s poem “Beside the Ganges” can be seen as a

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countermyth to Ady’s “On the Banks of the Tisza,” while Juhász’s long poem “On the Death of Raghuvir Sahay” constructs a myth of complementary Hungarian and Indian lives. Gábor Garai utilized the Orient to create a direct political countermyth to Ady’s appropriation of the alien in the opposition of Ganges and Tisza. The travelogue Summer in March (1971) written by Garai contains a number of his poems and translations.52 He is also known as the Hungarian translator of the poetry of the Urdu poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. Though Garai writes about a wide range of experiences in his travelogue, his poems, with their complex visual and haptic depiction of sensations, especially “Beside the Ganges,”address an even greater range of issues and experiences. In Ady’s poem “the light of southern noon” shines on the “young” and “vibrant” dreaming speaker of the poem.53 In Garai’s poem, however, the same “southern noon” now shines on the “limbs of human bodies,” “pariah dogs,” “cows,” and “begging children.” The cluttered human bodies similar to objects, “weathered feet and arms,” “stump of arm,” “fly-covered delicacies,” depict a phase of relations when “production for use-value, for immediate personal requirements predominates.” The objectification of the body and its parts and the offer of sensations and feelings for sale appear in a visible form: And from the bellies of houses, life hung out on to the streets, in a recess sprawled three bent old men, in another a man cooked brown mush in a brass bowl: inside people waited, outside they admired it with intoxicated patience. And all was for sale: the treasure, the spice, the dream of the earth, the strength, the pain, the hope, the misery of man. And all was immovable and impossible to buy, Like the sun in the sky, and the frozen silence in the hearts. I stood on the banks of the Ganges. I knew that no objects or pictures would I take with me, but some unspeakable brotherhood, no light celestial or earthly, ancient or entangled mystery, but that heat, which the stones were breathing into my face the thirst of plants, beasts and men while the river marched below through the desert of time, while the golden domes of the stand-stone temple gleamed above . . . and those who slept on its entrance did not believe they were doomed, . . . Fate had brought me here to see what I had only known: salvation lies not in mantras—only in liberation.

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Garai underlines the immediacy of human beings as objects and the complete absence of real value, and stresses the “heat” and “thirst,” the sensations shared by all, not only humans but also the organic world, by the river Ganges. The sense of doom is increased by the sight of the temple. At the end of the poem Garai puts forward the notion of liberation through human agency in place of devotion, or “mantras.” The utopia of liberation as an answer to suffering introduces a countermyth to Ady’s poetic myth of the Ganges as the origin of youth and energy. Ferenc Juhász, who came to the World Literary Festival in Bhopal in 1989, followed a new path in Hungarian poetry. His poem “The Boy Who Changed into a Stag Cries at the Gate of Secrets,” which was translated by Raghuvir Sahay into Hindi, took over the basic elements of Bartók’s Cantata Profana (1930), relocating it within a modern, urban context. Juhász used the Orient to construct a complimentary universe within the myth of his life and that of the Indian poet, his translator Raghuvir Sahay. In his poetic statement in Bhopal in January 1989, Ferenc Juhász spoke about his mother’s funeral that took place a week earlier, his first impression of India as a gigantic vision of reality, and his understanding of ethics. In the hotel where I live there stands a stuffed tiger in a large glass case. That tiger skin is stuffed with dead material. Poetry cannot be stuffed with dead material. The living tiger is stuffed only with nature since it itself is unconscious nature. Only man is more than the efflorescent or dead nature. Man is that being whose very existence is the faith of ethics. The universe, nature, and social order bind the fabric of moral law into man’s heart. That is why poetry is ethical logic, a search for light in the darkness, the light of many stars in the night of mortality. It is an offering, as the star offers consolatory light in our loneliness as human beings.54

Juhász’s long poem “On the Death of Raghuvir Sahay,” written after Sahay’s death in 1990, is an encyclopedia of his Indian experiences, his reflection on the commonality of his and Sahay’s life. The poem connects the subjects Juhász and Sahay, the location in India and Hungary, the lifetime of Juhász, their mothers (both charwomen), and the time spent with Sahay. The comparison deals with two parts, which refer to each other and do not remain isolated, self-enclosed units. The universe is a constant presence in Juhász’s poetic memory; Sahay continues in the present of the Hungarian winter. Juhász’s “word miracles” that he developed in the 1960s and 1970s are word constructions that connect metaphors built through associations combining notions and poetic myths with all the complexity of reading and interpreting them.55 Through these composite words, for example, “lead-gold face, stubbled with black hair” or “the salty body-waters of a lizard,” Juhász introduces the myth of complementary existences that bring together the work and life of the two poets.56

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The poetic encounters with India in the 1970s and ’80s brought further innovations by exploring a search for human agency—in Garai’s case to disrupt the prevailing structure of existence, in Juhász’s case to develop the myth of complementary lives. This chapter has mapped out four distinct phases in Hungarian cultural history from romanticism onward, within which the Orient, be it as an idea, as a cluster of images and associations, as an idealized representation of a location and the physical location of travel writing, or indeed as a set of cultural ideas and traditions to be accessed, emulated, or adapted, was used in the service of configuring and reconfiguring Hungarian identity as it became part of both the East and the West, or as it moved between and, at times, incorporated both. During each of these phases, political and literary developments in Hungarian culture and history required differing functions of these cultural Orients. The Orient in its many forms even changed within the work of the same poet or writer, and also varied across different genres: lyrical and epic poetry, the essay, the short story, and the novel all opened up spaces for representing and using the Orient in different ways. Orientalist writing at the time of Austrian suppression served to express an essential Hungarian national character, served to disseminate nationalism, and played a role in the task of Hungarian nation building. By the middle of the nineteenth century after the freedom struggle we see orientalist images used to configure the opposition of Buda and Attila in János Arany’s The Death of Buda and, thus, Hungarian identity aligned with the Orient via the figure of Attila the Hun. In Jókai’s novel, a work of defensive orientalism, the Hungarian character, Katalin, married to a Turkish character, inadvertently adopts oriental attire, and acquires oriental characteristics, showing that Hungarian-Turkish alliances lead to the dissemination of the Orient. In the early twentieth century the Orient was used to work through in literary-philosophical mode the complexities of modern subjectivity; the Orient represented the inner world, or, as in Weöres’s and Szabó’s poetry, both individual and collective identities. In the 1970s and 1980s the myth of oriental origins was countered by the myth of universal brotherhood allied through sensations of the body such as heat, hunger, and thirst. In the long poem of Juhász a different universe emerges that includes the cosmos, the vegetation, and the complimentary lives of two poets from Hungary and India. Turks or other orientals in the novel and the short story were used to mark out an area of danger to be treated with caution, especially for women in love or marital alliances: Katalin Kállay in Jókai’s novel, or traveling, as in the travelogue of Mária Fáy, or in Bengal Fire, based on the diary of Rózsa Hajnóczy. Novels and short stories that referenced the Orient also affirmed Hungarian middle-class, male, Christian values. Travel writing reflected on the

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suspicion or the neglect Hungarians experienced abroad. In the case of some authors like Baktay, it also recorded the love for the arts, landscape, and languages of the lands they visited. Essays in all four phases from the early nineteenth century to the late twentieth century affirmed the common aspirations for Western values of modernization, evoking the Orient simultaneously to qualify these aspirations in ways that were as ambiguous at that specific time as Hungarian identity was generally across the period considered.

Notes 1

Orientalism can be seen as a discursive formation, which includes systems of interrelated “types of statements, concepts and thematic choices,” and discourse includes a “combination of many voices.” See M. M. Bakhtin, The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays, trans. Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1981), 33. For the purposes of this chapter, Said’s characterization of orientalism as a discourse proves to be useful when it is associated with Bakhtin’s theory of discourse. 2

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991), 67–82.

3

Ernő Marosi, “A Magyar történelem képei” (Images of Hungarian History), in Történelem—Kép Szemelvények Múlt és Művészet kapcsolatából Magyarországon (History—Image Excerpts from the Relationship of Past and Art in Hungary), Kiállítás a Magyar Nemzeti Galériában 2000. március 17—szeptember 24 (Exhibition in the Hungarian National Gallery, 17 March–24 September 2000), Budapest, 11–23. The historians László Szalay and Mihály Horváth, who initiated academic history based mainly on written sources and published comprehensive syntheses about Hungarian history in the 1850s abroad and from the 1860s in Hungary, did not add new material about Hungarian prehistory. Szalay based his history on written sources available from the ninth century, and Horváth accepted the legends about the Hun-Scythian family of peoples. Ignác Romsics, Clio bűvöletében, magyar történetirás a 19–20. században—nemzetközi kitekintéssel (Under the Enchantment of Clio, Hungarian History Writing in the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century—with an International Overview) (Budapest: Osiris Kiadó, 2011), 96–118. 4

Gesta Hungarorum is the work of an anonymous author referred to as P. or Bele Regis Notarius, the notary of King Béla III, to whose rule (1172–96) the first written Hungarian written records are connected. It is a combination of legends (the origin of Hungarian from the magic bird “turul,” the Hun-Hungarian relationship, victories of Hungarians over Darius, Cyrus, and Alexander the Great). Gesta Hunnorum et Hungarorum is the title of the later work by Simon Kézai compiled around 1280, which took over material from and commented on the Gesta Hungarorum of anonymous. A Hungarian translation of the Latin original of Gesta Hungarorum by Dezső Pais can be found at http://mek.oszk. hu/02200/02245/02245.htm; an English translation of the Latin text by Martin Rady at http://eprints.ucl.ac.uk/18975/1/18975.pdf.

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5

As a reaction to the beginning of Hungarian and Czech national movements, the political and cultural trend of “Reichspatriotismus” (patriotism of the empire) was developed in the Habsburg monarchy. The patriotism of the empire was a Habsburg mythopoetic project supported by weekly and monthly publications, calenders, historical portraits, and landscapes published and organized by the Austrian historian Josef Hormayr and his circle. The movement of patriotism in the empire was aimed at creating a nation within the empire above the nationalities. The movement was strenghtened by Napoleon’s conquests and the collapse of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806. Edit Szentesi, “Birodalmi patriotizmus Történelemszemlélet, történetírás, történeti publicisztika és történelmi témák ábrázolása az Osztrák Császárságban 1828-ig” (Patriotism of the Empire View of History, Historical Prose and the Illustration of History in the Habsburg Monarchy), in Történelem—Kép Szemelvények Múlt és Művészet kapcsolatából Magyarországon (History—Image Excerpts from the Relationship of Past and Art in Hungary), Kiállítás a Magyar Nemzeti Galériában 2000. március 17–szeptember 24 (Exhibition in the Hungarian National Gallery, 17 March—24 September 2000), Budapest, 73–91. 6

Tom Nairn’s argument about the “ambivalence” of nationalism and its “highly ‘idealist’ political and ideological mobilization” also holds true for Hungary. Tom Nairn, “The Modern Janus,” New Left Review 1, no. 94 (1975): 3–29. 7

The inception of the renewal of Hungarian language is connected to György Bessenyei, a bodyguard of Empress Maria Theresa, who published The Tragedy of Agis and the translation of Pope’s Essay on Man in 1772. The initial phase of the renewal of Hungarian language (1790–1820) is connected with German being introduced as compulsory language in the Holy Roman Empire by Joseph II, putting an end to the use of Latin—then the lingua franca in Hungary—and directing attention to the state of the Hungarian language, which lacked a number of words to express contemporary notions of institutions, technology, and abstract ideas. In 1820 theoretical debates about the methods of creation of new phraseology, vocabulary, and syntax took place. In 1844 standards for Hungarian colloquial and academic language were agreed on and made official. We can consider the language reform to have been completed by 1872, when publication of the journal Nyelvőr (The Guard of Language), the quarterly of the Hungarian Academy, which formulates and oversees the rules and regulations of Hungarian language and style, began. A key figure in the movement was Ferenc Kazinczy (1759–1831). 8

Ugric or Ugrian languages are considered part of the Finno-Ugric, FinnoUgrian group of languages, Oguric people were Turkic groups. 9

On British interests see P. J. Marczell, William Moorcroft’s Commercial Pilgrimage to Manasa Sarowara in 1812, http://ladakhstudies.org/resources/ Resources/RROL6/14RROL6marczell.pdf (accessed 5 November 2012).

10

See Alexander Csoma de Kőrös, Tibetan-English Dictionary (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1834, 1984). In his preface Csoma thanks everyone who helped him, and explains his position in the following way: “he begs to inform the public that he had been not sent by any Government to gather political information; neither can he be accounted of the number of those wealthy European gentlemen who travel at their own expense for their pleasure and curiosity; but rather only a poor

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student, who was very desirous to see the different countries of Asia, as the scene of so many memorable transactions of former ages; to observe the manners of several people, and to learn their languages, of which he hopes, the world may see hereafter the results” (viii). 11

Anderson, Imagined Communities, 37–43.

12

Kókay-Buzinkay-Murányi, A magyar sajtó története (The History of the Hungarian Press) (Pécs: Sajtókönyvtár, 1994), 7–102. 13

Ibid., 70.

14

Miklós Jósika’s serial novels Zólyomi and Abafi were published in Athenaeum and in Aurora. The plot in these novels is set in medieval Transylvania in the proximity of Turkey and in a political sphere where Hungarians and Turks met on different terms. Writers, for example Mór Jókai (1825–1904), Zsigmond Kemény (1814–75), and Zsigmond Móricz (1879–1942), returned to the theme of Transylvanian history again and again. 15

István Széchenyi, A Kelet népe (People of the East) (Pozsony: Vigan Károly Friderik, 1841), 16. 16

István Széchenyi, Keleti utazás (Journey in the East) (Budapest: Terebess, 1999), 107. 17

Széchenyi, Kelet népe, 13.

18

István Széchenyi, Hitel (Credit), in Válogatott művei (Selected Works), ed. András Gergely and György Spira (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1991), 1:234. 19

Mihály Vörösmarty, Zalán futása (The Flight of Zalán), in Vörösmarty Mihály összes költeményei I (Collected Poems of Mihály Vörösmarty, vol. 1), ed. Horváth Károly and Tóth Dezső (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1963), 53–255.

20

This line is linked further to the love of Ete and Hajna, the beautiful daughter of an old Hungarian warrior, Huba. Ete’s rival is the Fairy of the South, Zámir. The Flight of Zalán exploited oral and literary tradition to a great extent, and raised them to the level of mythology. Vörösmarty exploited the old BulgarianTurkish connection to present beauty and charm in an ambivalent way. He also strategically utilized the knowledge about the Zoroastrians to construct Hungarian mythology. The Flight of Zalán is rich in brilliant details, and the combination of the Roman and Hungarian epic tradition produces a grandiose visual effect. Oriental details, like the armory of Huba with the “frightening weapons of Bengal” and his sword with its “ivory handle,” are utilized. 21

Vörösmarty, “Zalán futása,” 163; Lóránt Czigány, A History of Hungarian Literature, from the Earliest Times to the Mid-1970s, http://mek.oszk. hu/02000/02042/html/20.html (accessed 26 October 2012). This online work is based upon the second edition of Lóránt Czigány, A History of Hungarian Literature, from the Earliest Times to the Mid-1970s (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986). 22

János Arany, “Buda halála” (The Death of Buda), in Arany János összes költeményei II (The Collected Poems of János Arany, vol. 2), ed. Dezső Keresztury and Mária Keresztury (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1967), 681–784. English translation of Anton Nyerges available at http://mek.oszk.hu/00500/00595/ html/epics1.htm#3 (accessed 5 November 2012).

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23

János Arany, “Naive eposzunk” (Hungarian Naïve Epics), in Tanulmányok és kritikák (Studies and Reviews). ed. Pál S. Varga (Debrecen: Kossuth Egyetemi Kiadó, 1998), 75–81. 24

Arany’s orientalist interests stretched further: he also translated a number of Indian works into Hungarian, wrote poems, and translated an essay on Indian themes. Besides his translation of Shakuntala, based on Monier Williams’s English translation, Arany also translated Monier Williams’s essay on “Hindu” drama and inserted a poem into his translation. Both works encapsulate the teachings of nineteenth-century orientalism. 25

For an explanation of this epithet see Ferenc Málnási, “A legnagyobb magyar mesemondó (185 éve született Jókai Mór)” (The Great Hungarian Storyteller [Mór Jókai was born 185 years ago]) at: http://www.nyeomszsz.org/orszavak/ pdf/MalnasiJokaiNegyenyediJav%5B2%5D.pdf (accessed 30 June 2013). 26

It is not about conquest by Hungarians in foreign territory, but about the presence of Turks in Hungarian territory. Antal Bókay, “Sztereotípia, diszkrimináció és a Másik identitása” (Stereotype, Discrimination, and the Identity of the Other One), Lettre, 7 January 2008, http://www.c3.hu/scripta/lettre/lettre71/bokay. htm (accessed 21 October 2012). 27

Mór Jókai, Erdély aranykora (The Golden Age of Transylvania), ed. Miklós Nagy (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1962), 38. 28

Ibid., 54–66, 106–21.

29

Jókai’s drawings and paintings are well known. In 1843 he painted a portrait of Sándor Petőfi (1823–49) in exchange for Petőfi having copied his play A zsidó fiú (The Jewish Boy) for a competition; in 1843 he also did a portrait of his mother. His sketch Ingrez hegedűje (The Violin of Ingrez) is from a later period. Miklós Nagy, “Jókai, Mór (1825–1904),” in A magyar irodalom története, 1849–1905 (The History of Hungarian Literature, 1849–1905), ed. István Sőtér (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1965), 4:284–321. 30

Mór Jókai, Török világ Magyarországon, http://mek.oszk.hu/00800/00814/ html/jokai10.htm (accessed 21 October 2012). 31

See generally: Carl E. Schorske, Fin-de-Siècle Vienna (New York: Knopf, 1980); Ilona Sármány, Bécs festészete a századfordulón (Painting in Vienna at the Turn of the Century) (Budapest: Corvina, 1981). The connection is also illuminated in Lukács’s interpretation of Flaubert’s Salammbô and the novel’s connection with the modernization of inner life. In this respect the characters of Salammbo and Azraele in Jókai’s novel are similar. See Georg Lukács, A történelmi regény (The Historical Novel) (Budapest: Magvető Kiadó, 1977), 262–94. 32

Margit Köves, “The Semiotics of Empire-Building: The Imperial Assemblage in India (1877) and the Milleneum Celebrations in the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (1896),” in Semiotics of Language, Literature, and Cinema, ed. Harish Narang (Delhi: Book Plus, 2000), 95–104. 33

Béla Lukácsi, MTA lexikon (The Encyclopedia of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), http://www.enc.hu/1enciklopedia/fogalmi/nyelvtud/ugortorok.htm (January 2012, accessed 21 October 2012).

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34 See: Paul Jakob Deussen, Sechzig Upanishads des Veda (1897); Friedrich Max Müller, Upanishads (1879); Georg Bühler, The Sacred Laws of the Aryas (1879); James Legge, The Sacred Books of China, Parts 1–6 (1879); James Darmesteter, The Zend-Avesta (1880); E. W. West, Pahlavi Texts (1880); F. Max Müller, The Dhammapada (1881); V. Fausböll, The Sutta-Nipata (1881); T. W. Rhys Davids, Buddhist Suttas (1881); T. W. Rhys Davids and Hermann Oldenberg, The Vinaya Texts (1881); Georg Bühler, The Laws of Manu (1886). 35

From an unpublished translation by Vijaya S. Varma, printed with his kind permission. All poetry translations hereafter from Varma, unless otherwise credited. 36

On the Banks of the Tisza was published in the collection Új Versek (New Poems, 1906). The collection generated great literary debates and has been regarded ever since as the touchstone of modern Hungarian poetry. 37

Endre Ady, Ady Endre összes versei (Endre Ady Collected Poems), ed. József Láng and Pál Schweitzer (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1977), 595, 47, and 67.

38

Endre Ady, “In the Margin of an Unknown Corvina Codex,” in The Explosive Country: A Selection of Articles and Studies, 1898–1916, selection by Erzsébet Vezér, introductory essay, translation, and annotation by G. F. Cushing (Budapest: Corvina, 1977), 82–93. Cited in the main text as IMCC. 39

See Georg Lukács, “Longing and Form,” in Soul and Form, trans. Anna Bostock (London: Merlin, 1974), 97–98. Also, in his notes on Dostoevsky, Lukács links protagonists like Raskolnikov, Zosima, and Myshkin to Buddhist philosophy. See Georg Lukács, Dostojewski, Notizen und Entwürfe, ed. J. C. Nyíri (Budapest: Akadémiai Kiadó, 1985), 126. Furthermore, Lukács wrote in his diary: “So in different words: in case the Vedas are true according to which the work opens only the way of the fathers and not the divine way—then I can shoot myself. Because I cannot stop rebirth through my work then (work) is useless for me.” Georg Lukács, Napló (Diary), in Curriculum Vitae, ed. János Ambrus (Budapest: Magvető Kiadó, 1982), 446. 40

Géza Gárdonyi, Egri csillagok, http://mek.oszk.hu/00600/00656/html (16 April 2003; accessed 21 October 2012).

41

István Széchenyi, “Keleti útinapló,” in Válogatott művei (Selected Works), ed. György Spira (Budapest: Szépirodalmi, 1991), 54–57.

42

Gróf Manó Andrássy, Utazás Kelet Indiákon, Ceylon, Java, Khina, Bengal (Traveling in the East-Indies, Ceylon, Java, China, Bengal; Bengali into English) (Pest: Emich G., 1853). 43 Béláné Mocsáry Mária Fáy, India és Ceylon, Útijegyzetek (India and Ceylon, Travelogue) (Budapest: Athenaeum, 1899), 15. 44

Lőrinc Szabó, Buddha tenyerén (On the Palm of Buddha) (Budapest: Helikon, 1991).

45

Sándor Weörös, Egybegyűjtött irások II (Collected Works, vol. 2) (Budapest: Magvető Könyvkiadó, 1986), 235–41. 46

Ildikó Puskás, India Bibliography (Budapest: Akadémiai, 1991).

47

Rózsa G. Hajnóczy, Bengáli tűz (Bengal Fire) (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1977).

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48 Ágnes Pap, G. Hajnóczy Rózsa indiai levelei (The Indian letters of Rózsa G. Hajnóczy), Irodalmi Szemle (Literary Review) 7 (2012): 76–85; 9 (2012): 28–33; 10 (2012): 57–64. 49 Ervin Baktay, Indiai éveim (My Indian Years) (Budapest: Palatinus, 1938, 2004), 181. Hereafter cited parenthetically by page number. 50

Personal communication, e-mail from János Háy to the author, 27 April 2013; and e-mail from Gábor Lanczkor to the author, 5 May 2013. 51

The concept echoes the title of Anderson, Imagined Communities.

52

Gábor Garai, Márciusi nyár: Jegyzetek és versek egy indiai utazásról (Summer in March: Notes and Poems about an Indian Journey) (Budapest: Szépirodalmi, 1971), 84–85. 53

Endre Ady, “A Tisza parton,” http://mek.oszk.hu/00500/00588/html/ vers0101.htm (accessed 17 July 2013), English translations in this paragraph are all from unpublished translations by Vijaya S. Verma. The Hungarian original is in Garai, Márciusi nyár, 84–85. 54

Handwritten note read by Ferenc Juhász in Bhopal, 13 January 1989, translated by M. Köves. 55

See http://epa.oszk.hu/01400/01433/00050/pdf/EPA01433_szepirodalmi_figyelo_12-3-015-szalai-juhasz.pdf (accessed 16 May 2013). 56

See http://dia.jadox.pim.hu/jetspeed/displayXhtml?offset=1&origOffset=1&docId=678&secId=64231&qdcId=3&libraryId=-1&filter (accessed 19 July 2013).

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10: Where the Orient Ends? Orientalism and Its Function for Imperial Rule in the Russian Empire Kerstin S. Jobst

I

N ORIENTALISM, Edward Said fiercely criticized what he saw as the complicity of academic oriental studies with the colonial projects of the British, French, and American Empires. However, a few years before Said, certain Western historians of the Russian Empire had already begun to scrutinize the complex relationship between the Russian center and the residents of its Asian colonies. One important example was the anthology Russia and Asia, edited by the American historian Wayne Vucinich in 1972. Because of its subtitle—Essays on the Influence of Russia on the Asian Peoples—this volume seemed to describe the Russian-Asian colonial encounter as a one-way street toward the peripheries, in which the mutual influence between the colonizers and the colonized played only a subordinate role. But this first impression was deceptive, because the articles explained the profound Asian influences on the Russian side as well. A couple of years before the first publication of Orientalism these authors had observed the Russian scholarly gaze on the oriental other in a Saidian way, and gone even further than Said by exploring the mutual interplay between the colonizers and the colonized.1 In spite of the manifold criticism of Orientalism, Said’s work inspired many historians of the Russian Empire in the next decades.2 Thus numerous books—mostly in English—on the Russian-Asian encounter were published. Their authors not only discussed the concept of “orientalism” critically, but also extended the perspective by examining the reciprocity of the Russian-oriental relationship.3 None of them could overlook the fact that since the Enlightenment the constructed entity “eastern Europe” was considered from a Western point of view as a European civilization of lesser quality. Larry Wolf has described in detail this “invention” of eastern Europe as a remote and underdeveloped inner-European region.4 This was especially true for the Russian Empire, which became both a protagonist and an object of orientalist projections—and this despite the fact that Peter I (“the Great”) had expanded Russia into a major European power, and thereby opened the so-called window to the West.5 And the West had

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good reasons for this perception, because Russia abandoned serfdom only in 1861 and remained an autocracy until the revolutions of 1917. Another reason for this attitude toward Russia as an inner-European other was the historical relationship between Russians and Muslims in the European-Asian border region, which had been more durable, more versatile, and closer than in most other European regions. For example, the famous Charles Joseph de Ligne (1735–1814), an outstanding diplomat in the Austrian civil service and well acquainted with the situation in Russia during the reign of Catherine II, said “Grattez le Russe et vous trouverez le Tartar” (“Scratch the Russian and you will find the Tatar”); in fact it became a bon mot to depict “the Russian” as not properly European and yet not properly Asian either. This assumed “in-betweenness” played a decisive role in inner-Russian debates as well: the close historical connection between the Muslim and the Eastern Christian civilizations was an important fact, and sometimes it led Russian intellectuals to believe that the Russian people were actually a kind of Russian-Asian blend or at least an identity sui generis. Apparently this is also true for many Russians today: according to a survey of the Levada Center, the major research institute in the Russian Federation, in February 2007, more than 70  percent of the respondents did not believe that Russians were Europeans.6 Therefore, the question of the historian David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye—“Can we speak of a Russian Orientalism?”—is still highly relevant, and not only for this reason.7 Like Said, he recognizes the fundamental relationship between knowledge and power in colonial enterprises as such, but in his impressive work on Russian orientalistic studies he nevertheless concludes that Said’s Orientalism was “not wholly relevant” in the Russian case.8 This thesis is not really new, but requires further examination. Thus this chapter discusses the character of an orientalism à la russe and its deployment in the Tsarist Empire. It is important because Said himself was convinced of the relative absence of orientalistic habits in the self-conceptualization of the Russian Empire. Indeed, this idea is somewhat misleading, and the reasons for Said’s (mis)interpretation are discussed in this chapter. Moreover, in the following, the uncontroversial differences between Russian and Western orientalisms as well as the obvious parallels with the classic British or French examples used by Said will be considered. Finally, this chapter will explain the deployment of orientalist models, strategies, and tropes in the Russian Empire before the revolutions of 1917 in the context of its specific historical construction as an ontologically inferior, east European other by the West.

I. The Location of the Russian Orient British-French-American orientalism, as Said described it, is still considered as a kind of standard imperialistic discourse, and it is against this

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discourse that one “measures” all imperial/colonial attitudes toward the other. However, this view ignores the special position of these empires in a global context and does not take into account the complexity and diversity of imperial rule on the global scale. This chapter argues for more than just one “standard orientalism,”9 as, for instance, Robert Irwin proposed a couple of years ago.10 What does that mean? Not only for Said but for many historians of colonial history, the British Empire became “the” model empire. All other great powers with imperialistic ambitions—including the transcontinental Russian or Habsburg Empires—were measured against the British example. However, with its temporarily overwhelming dominance during the long nineteenth century, the postulate of free trade economy, and its overseas settler territories, the British Empire seems to be the telling exception in the concert of imperial powers before the First World War.11 It is no surprise that under these unique conditions a special British orientalist discourse developed, which was then taken by Said as the orientalistic gold standard, a position that remained more or less unchallenged by others. However, if the British case is taken as a variation on a more complex theme—or, indeed, as an exception—then other varieties of orientalist discourse, such as the Russian and east European cases, no longer seem unusual. This means that a post-Saidian concept of orientalism needs to be developed. It is interesting that some of the most promising suggestions have come from historians and ethnographers of the supposedly backward Eastern empires, specialists on the Habsburg or Russian Empires. They have helped to “include” the European East again in the all-European context, to which it belongs: categories such as “microcolonialism,”12 “frontier orientalism” (Grenzlandorientalismus),13 or “noncolonial orientalism” are under discussion.14 By discussing Russian orientalist discourse and its uses before the revolutions of 1917/1918, this chapter thus contributes to this volume’s wider aims of understanding orientalist writing not as a monolithic habit of thinking, but as a series of nationally and locally differing ways of perceiving, depicting, and ruling the other.15 According to Schimmelpenninck van der Oye the Orient as seen from the Russian perspective was located in the following areas: the Ottoman Empire, the Crimea, the Caucasus, China, Central and Southeast Asia, and (because of the imperialist rivalry since the turn of the twentieth century) Japan. Of importance is also Siberia, already conquered in the sixteenth century, which had developed in Russian discourse into an exotic region in the cold.16 Thus—and hardly surprisingly—Russian intellectuals located the Orient primarily in the East of the Tsarist Empire: territories inhabited by Muslims or even pagan peoples, living for instance in the remote regions of the North. More complicated were the cases of the Crimea or the Caucasus: for European intellectuals the Crimea—the classical Taurica—unquestionably belonged to Europe, but because of

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its Muslim inhabitants, the Crimean Tatars, it was oriental at the same time. The assignment of the Caucasus region as Asian was highly controversial even among contemporary experts, and not only for geographical reasons.17 Like the allegedly civilized West, the Russian Orient included territories that, if we follow Said, were parts of the “good old Orient.” This was an Orient that had flourished once, but degenerated over the centuries. This holds not only for China, Japan, or the Holy Land, but also for the present-day regions of Armenia and Georgia in the South Caucasus, once a stronghold of early Christianity. From the perspective of Moscow or St. Petersburg, the vostok (the Orient/the East), however, was located not only in the East but also in the South, Southeast, and even in the North (Siberia). The Russian Orient is, therefore, geographically as unclearly defined as in the West European context.

II. Said and the Russian Empire For Said, the geographic indistinctness of locating the Orient was a clear symptom of the presence of orientalistic thinking, because he was convinced that cultural and geographical entities are not real but intellectual constructions.18 This holds—as shown—also for the Russian case. Nevertheless, Said hardly dealt with the Russian Empire, and was not excessively critical of professional Russian oriental studies when he mentioned them at all. He did not consider other European powers in his study either because, according to him, Germans, Spaniards, Swiss, Portuguese, and Italians have no distinct orientalist tradition—in contrast to the French and the British.19 Said was especially fiercely criticized for ignoring the German orientalists. However, he “excused” them because they had a rather philological orientation and, moreover, the Kaiserreich had begun with the establishment of a colonial empire much later than the British or the French.20 But for the Russian context, orientalists of German descent or trained at German universities proved to be highly relevant because many German or German-born scholars had strongly influenced the professionalization of this subject in the Russian Empire. Said was a literary scholar and not an expert on history. He assumed that the British and the French had a far longer imperial tradition than did Russia. As a consequence, Said argued, their orientalistic habits of thinking were much more deeply rooted than in the Tsarist Empire. But here he was wrong, because as early as the mid-sixteenth century the Grand Duchy of Moscow under Ivan IV (“the Terrible”) had begun to conquer the Orient: in 1552 and 1554 it was successful in the Khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan, and in 1582 Cossack groups like the notorious Yermak Timofeyevich subjugated Siberia. In the following years the Russian army began to consolidate Russian power and set up forts even further in the east. Thus, at this time at least, the colonial transcontinental expansion of

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the Muscovite state was parallel to that of the British and French Empires. Whether this fact in itself influenced a Russian orientalistic imagination and led to the “othering” of the non-Slavic/non-Orthodox population is still a controversy in scholarship.21 But it is uncontested that, from the eighteenth century onward, when the Russian expansion took place in the southern steppe regions, tangible models of the oriental other were formed among Russian intellectuals.22 Thus, Said was completely wrong in his view (in Culture and Imperialism) that the Russian Empire had spread only transcontinentally,23 because it had held (from 1741 until 1867) possessions in Alaska, established a chain of trading posts on the Californian West Coast (“Fort Ross”—i.e., Krepost´ Ross—Fortress Ross),24 and also on Hawaii. Of course, Said was a specialist in West European literature. This may explain his lack of knowledge of the writings of Russian orientalists and protoethnographers, Russian history, and the Russian language. Furthermore, he was unaware of two basic facts about Russian imperial rule and Russian oriental studies. Yet these facts, examined in the following section, are important in understanding the deployment of Russian orientalism. Transcontinental Expansion in the Russian Case The fact of transcontinental expansion established first and foremost a fundamental relationship of dominance and power of the imperial center over its peripheries. That did not necessarily mean, as Said apparently thought, a less oppressive rule. For those indigenous groups who came in one form or another under Russian rule the chance of political and cultural autonomy was in most cases reduced. It can certainly be argued that in land empires the influence of the colonizer on the colonized (and vice versa) was even stronger than in cases where colonial rule was applied by a power across the sea. In general, in land empires the colonial encounter was often even more inclusive precisely because of the spatial proximity.25 It is undisputed that this fact influenced Russian colonial discourses. But as in other colonial contexts, the colonized had the scope to develop some freedom of action even inside this colonial system. Oriental Studies and Imperial Expansion: The Russian Case Said justified his concentration on British and French oriental studies by citing their early professionalization and their pioneering works that influenced the whole academic world. For this reason their exponents shaped the essentialized Western image of the Orient for generations.26 For Said, a milestone in the development of the dangerous liaison between the empire and the academics was the foundation of the École des langues orientales in Paris in 1795. Its work was closely connected with the French Arabist Silvestre de Sacy (1758–1838) and his scientific support of Napoleon

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Bonaparte’s Egyptian expedition of 1798.27 Apparently Said was unaware that there was a telling Russian parallel: the Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages (Lazarevskii institut vostochnykh jazykov) was founded in Moscow already in 1815—less than two decades later. It specialized in studies of the languages of the Caucasus—a region that had just been conquered by Tsarist troops at this time. This is just one indication that the professionalization of ethnography and orientalistic studies was closely connected with Russian imperial expansion.28 This context had already been recognized by orientalists in the Russian Empire, and some of them were keen on using it for their own discipline. One of them was the Russian orientalist Aleksandr Kazem-Bek, who, like some other Russian specialists, was of Muslim (Azeri) descent. He promised, during the festive opening of the St. Petersburg School of Oriental Studies in 1856, that the discipline of oriental studies would offer concrete support for the political and economic interests of the Russian Empire.29 And he was not the only one: for many of his colleagues, Russia’s geopolitical “fate” was inseparably connected with its drive for transcontinental expansion, which was often interpreted as a particular advantage because the Orient could be studied in the homeland.30 So complicity between the empire and hommes de lettres can be observed in the Russian case as well. Said frankly admitted the existence of internal differences among British or French orientalists about the evaluation of the East.31 And this is true also for the Russian case. As Schimmelpenninck van der Oye points out, “[it] is impossible to reduce Russian scholars of Asia to a single type.”32 There were Russian orientalists who turned to their oriental object of investigation with almost rapturous love,33 while others developed a more “objective interest.” Said noted that such objectivity was impossible: “It is . . . correct that every European, in what he could say about the Orient, was consequently a racist, an imperialist, and almost totally ethnocentric.”34 However, among these “objective” Russian specialists were, for example, the Turkologist Vasilii D. Smirnov (1846–1922), who wrote a standard work on the history of the Crimean Khanate,35 the linguist Nikolai I. Il’minskii (1822–91),36 or one of the most renowned scholars of Islam of his time, Vasilii V. Bartol’d (1869– 1930). Bartol’d is a phenomenon not only because his works have been translated into Western languages over and over again, but also because he effortlessly survived the revolutions and the system changes of 1917/1918.37 On the basis of the works of these experts, one can observe a further difficulty with regard to Said’s understanding of oriental studies in general: during a researcher’s long life, and with the passage of time, the view on the oriental object of research can change. All three Russian orientalists had been more or less “pro-Muslim” in their youth, but developed increasingly critical or even anti-Islamic attitudes when they grew

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older. Like many of their colleagues in the West, all three later frankly admitted that it was their duty to serve the “fatherland” and to support its colonial project with their research.38 From the last decades of the nineteenth century on, and especially in the era of Alexander III (1881– 96), there was a growing number of specialists who conformed perfectly to the classical Saidian model of an oriental scholar: without restrictions and biographical caesuras, the primary task of their discipline was to back up the Russian civilizing mission and to analyze “scientifically” the nonSlavic population of the empire in order to serve the empire’s interests. Many of them strove for a rapid russification of these groups in order to “improve” them; others were deeply convinced of the ontological inferiority of Muslims, Asians, and other “orientals.”39 For these reasons Said’s assessment of the relative absence of orientalistic modes of thinking in the Russian Empire was clearly wrong. Presumably autobiographical and political factors may have played a certain role in this misinterpretation.40 Said, the Palestinian-born Protestant who had lived in the United States since his youth, was a lifelong and sometimes quite fierce advocate of the rights of the Palestinians, although he criticized Arab and Muslim regimes too. This might have influenced Said’s attitudes toward Russia: the Soviet Union itself had supported the Arab position against Israel and thus the United States for years. Moreover, Moscow’s self-stylization as a decidedly anticolonial power toward the so-called Third World was not entirely without success, at least until its invasion of Afghanistan in 1979/80. Soviet propaganda promoted the idea of an imperial Russia less ruthless than the former empires in the West.41 This may also have contributed to Said’s gracious view of imperial Russia and its attitudes toward its own oriental others.42

III. The Structure of the Russian Empire and Its Orientalist Topoi Said was criticized for many reasons (and sometimes justifiably so)—for example, for ignoring the diversity of the attitudes toward “the Orient” within the academic world as a whole or within the oeuvre of a single author. Furthermore, he showed no interest in the varying forms of imperial rule and differing colonial regimes within one and the same empire— a situation that also shaped discourses about the oriental other.43 Thus it is a truism that the British and French domination over their white settler colonies, or regions such as India, differed from the way imperial rule was conducted in black Africa, and this was also reflected in academic debates. It is a future task, and not only for historians, to study more precisely the given interplay between imperial rule(s) and colonial discourses, the influence of orientalistic stereotypes on colonial practices and vice versa.

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What, though, are the implications of this debate for our understanding of the Russian or other transcontinental empires like the Habsburg or Ottoman Empires thus far?44 To what extent did any inner structural and political diversity affect orientalist attitudes and shape discourses on the Orient in Russia? In Among Empires (2006), the American historian Charles M. Maier has described this Eastern empire as highly consistent, having a strong authoritarian structure that contrasted with the British colonies.45 According to Maier, dominance over Russia’s colonial peripheries was secured there by means of institutionalized, transnational elite networks, imperial border regimes, and a partly structural, partly physical, repertoire of violence. In fact, until the breakup of the Tsarist Empire in 1917 not just one, but a variety of different forms of imperial power policies existed simultaneously (as was the case in the British or French Empires). This affected, for example, the legal status of the inhabitants in the colonial peripheries, the extent of intervention in indigenous populations, and the degree of mental appropriation (in Russian: osvoenie) of the colonial other through the intellectuals in the center. In legal terms, regions such as the southern Caucasus or the Crimea enjoyed the same rights as the Russian territories, regardless of their large numbers of Muslim inhabitants. In these cases we can speak of an inclusive Russian policy.46 However, the Emirate of Bukhara and the Khanate of Khiva were similar to classical protectorates, as they were known in other empires. There, Russia controlled only the economy and foreign policy, while the traditional social and cultural constitution remained largely untouched.47 In 1822, with the “Regulations on the Rule over People of Different Descent” (Ustav ob upravlenii inorodtsev), a special legal category for a large number of non-Slavic inhabitants in the Tsarist Empire was created. Muslims, nomads, and other indigenous populations in Siberia, Central Asia, and the North Caucasus fell under this act, and therefore stood outside the legal code of the central Russian regions. Originally, these regulations were introduced as a legal statute for special treatment of non-Slavic groups to protect their traditional life, because some laws of the empire were deemed to be inappropriate for them. However, in the course of the nineteenth century, the term inorodets acquired a negative connotation in Russian discourse and became a synonym for lack of culture and civilization.48 The Tatar inhabitants of the Crimea and the Volga-Kama region, however, were regarded as rather civilized, and their rights and obligations did not differ significantly from those of the Russian subjects in the center. Their secular elites—the mirza—were largely co-opted into the so-called table of ranks (tabel´ o rangach), a formal list that determined the positions and ranks in the military, government, and court of imperial Russia. The Tatar rural population on the Crimea was even doing better than their social counterparts in the

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Russian heartland: after the annexation in 1783, it was not forced into serfdom, which was only abolished in the Tsarist Empire in 1861. The Muslim peasants also kept—at least in theory, not always in practice—a number of traditional privileges, which sometimes protected them from exploitation by Russian and Tatar landlords.49 In comparison with other empires the legal status of indigenous groups like the Tatars was relatively favorable, but this does not mean that orientalist attitudes were absent. It is obvious that, from the eighteenth century onward, the imperial Russian elites shared the classic orientalist repertoire that their social counterparts in Western Europe had developed. This included, for example, the propagation of a civilizing mission toward the East. Of particular interest is the legendary circular sent by Foreign Minister Aleksandr M. Gorchakov (1798–1883) in 1864 addressed to the other European powers. He stressed Russia’s determination “as a civilized state” to teach all the “semi-wild, roving tribes without fixed social organization . . . quiet manners.”50 Regardless of the legal status of the oriental other (as inorodtsy,51 or as more privileged subjects52), the Russian elites followed classic orientalistic habits by thinking in binary constructions. Nomadic cultures were compared with sedentary peoples and were stigmatized as inferior. Orthodox Christians were described as more powerful, masculine, and loyal to the tsar than (male) Muslims. In the Russian discourse Muslims were degenerate, immutable, dangerous, untidy, and in any case difficult to educate.53 In addition—as in the West—the figure of the “noble savage” circulated in contemporary literature and journalism, especially in the romantic period.54 Occasionally this type corresponded with the “typical oriental woman,” sometimes a wild-loving, sexualized female of the harem, sometimes an unconditionally loving “stranger.” The famous Russian writer Mikhail Lermontov (1814–41) depicted this passionate and endearing archetype in A Hero of Our Time with the oriental woman Bela, who falls in love with the “useless” (lishnii) Russian protagonist, who became proverbial in Russian culture as a superfluous man.55 It should be noted that more conventional orientalist discourses, as Said defined them, existed in the Russian Empire as well; these existed either in the sphere of knowledge or resulted from direct encounters with the other. Simultaneously a latent orientalist tendency developed, which was nourished by the literary and cultural imagination. Basically the Russian debates on the Orient describe the stereotypical and asymmetrical relationship between a civilized Orthodox Russian and the less developed, essentialized “oriental.” Especially the Russian literature of the romantic period unfolded the full range of an orientalist repertoire as Said described it.56 However, some peculiarities of Russian discourse about the Orient can be observed, which reflect the distinctive position of Russia as an empire.

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IV. The Special Features of the Russian Case These special features, which are certainly not unique, resulted from the specific historical genesis of the discourses in question and “produced” specific colonial politics as well as specific colonial discourses. In comparison to other empires the relatively rare use of the term “colony” for the successively conquered territories is striking. In the words of the theorist of Pan-Slavism Nikolai Danilevskii, in 1871 Russia had never even possessed colonies,57 a view that was shared by many other Russians. For the admiral and owner of vast properties on the Crimean peninsula, Nikolai Mordvinov, only the Caucasian Georgia and the Crimea were “our colonial territories,” but only because of their climatic peculiarities, not in a political or economic sense.58 In any case, the Crimea was for him at the same time “the finest part of our native empire.”59 Here he combined the category of the “ethnic nation” with that of the “multinational empire.” Such unclear demarcation is not uncommon in transcontinental empires because “the imperial center and its metropolis lack a clear distinction from the colonial subject.”60 The (largely) transcontinental nature of Russian expansion had far-reaching consequences not only for Russia as an empire but also for the processes of Russian nation building, because a clear definition as to where the nation state ended and the empire began was difficult to achieve, as it may have been in the Cisleithanian case in Austria-Hungary.61 This also shaped the view of Russians on Russia as a colonial power. The idea of the “natural quality” of the Russian expansion, as the historian Vasilii O. Kliuchevskii (1842–1911) put it, was widely promoted.62 Elsewhere, a prominent representative of another transcontinental empire explained its expansion: in 1903 US President Theodore Roosevelt interpreted America’s venture to the West as “biologically natural” when he depicted the American drive to the Pacific Ocean. For him this was a leitmotif in the history of the American nation.63 Imperial expansion in Russia was therefore an equivalent to the “manifest destiny” of the United States. Indeed, ever since Alexis de Tocqueville the comparison between the Russian and American transcontinental expansion process has been drawn again and again. Just as with Austria-Hungary, another landlocked empire, Russia and the United States were torn between a partial imperial amnesia and the conviction of being an ideal colonial power.64 Sometimes they even received foreign visitors in their “model colonies” in the Crimea (Russia),65 the Philippines (US),66 or BosniaHerzegovina (Austria-Hungary)67 to present their knowledge of “good” and “legitimate” colonial practices. The imperial elites were convinced that they were the bearers of civilization and (in the American case) of democracy, but no colonialists. This was classical orientalist thinking. As already indicated, the spatial proximity of Russians and non-Russians/Asians determined the nature of the “colonial” encounters, which

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were generally regarded as more inclusive than in the classical empires described by Said. For example: in British colonial debates race played a crucial role for the distinction between the self and the other. This distinction alluded to the complex of sexuality. Unregulated concubinage between white men and indigenous women was quite common in the British colonies, but proper marriages remained the absolute exception— or were at least very difficult to legalize.68 This was different in Russia, where such liaisons were imaginable. In literature, travelogues, and colonial narratives in general, stories about love between indigenous women and Christian men were widespread. The following plot is typical and exists in several only slightly differing versions: In an “exotic” territory under Russian domination (in this case the Crimea), a male Christian and a beautiful Tatar girl fall in love with each other. After he persuades her “that Mohammed is no prophet,” she leaves her parents’ house and the religious community of all Muslims—the so-called umma. She then receives Orthodox baptism and marries the Christian boy. The newlyweds have to withstand many difficulties arising from the connection between the two religions. But high-ranking Russian officials (sometimes even the tsar himself) help the couple in love to overcome all problems. In such narratives the oriental female is a reconciling link between the colonizers and the colonized. Via Orthodox baptism the indigenous woman was not only elevated to “civilization,” but also received the opportunity to escape from her male-dominated religion and its strict gender order.69 It is said that Tsar Nicholas I had even planned mass weddings between Russian soldiers stationed in the insurgent areas of the North Caucasus and Circassian women in order to reconcile the two peoples. But his advisers recognized that this would have intensified Muslim resistance because marriage between a (Christian) infidel and a Muslim was considered a mortal sin in Islam.70 Actually, in the pre-Soviet period, marriages between Christians and Muslims remained the exception. However, the fact that romantic relationships between Russian men and indigenous women were considered desirable is important for the understanding of Russian orientalism. Obviously here—unlike the British case—there is no fear of miscegenation (métissage). This also reminds us of Spanish and Dutch imperial rule, where at times the imperial elites encouraged marriages between indigenous women and the colonizers because it was considered an instrument of colonial policy.71 This tendency amounts to more than simply “going native” within the colonial encounter; such practices tell us something about racism. In the Russian debates—in contrast to the British or German context— racism played only a minor role. Because of a “common” Russian-Asian history, geographic proximity, and a dynamic Russian settlement movement to the East, acculturation, hybridization, and forms of creolization were mostly judged positively. A key word in the debates on the Russian/

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non-Russian encounter was the term slijanie (fusion, amalgamation). This actually meant a peaceful form of russification owing to the superiority of Russian civilization: a conviction that was taken for granted.72 However, in their actual encounters Slavic settlers in the colonies often acculturated to the foreign cultures. Russian imperial rule and Russian orientalism often tried to include the other, but remained convinced of Russian superiority.

V. Conclusion: The Deployment of Orientalist Discourse in the Tsarist Empire Was Russia “un empire comme les autres,” as the historian Marc Raeff once asked, without giving an answer?73 In any case it was characterized by Russia’s special relationship with the Asian other. For historians the appreciation of the joint Russian-Asian heritage among the Russian imperial elites is a “fascinating element of Russian thinking about Asia.”74 Thus, “the Russian orient” was sometimes regarded as less backward and therefore in a more positive light than the cases Said has described. This goes especially for the members of influential intellectual schools like the Slavophiles in the nineteenth century, and for influential writers and thinkers such as the natural theologian and Pan-Slavist Nikolai Danilevskii or Fyodor Dostoevsky. Mention should also be made of the so-called Eurasians, who tried to revalue the Asian heritage of the Russians as an advantage—and not as a symbol of backwardness—in the postrevolutionary era.75 They chose a different path from the so-called zapadniki (Westernizers), who had been voting for Russia’s “Europeanization” since the mid-nineteenth century.76 Their protagonists, including the likes of Peter Chaadaev, Vissarion Belinskii and Alexander Herzen, were convinced that Russia had just one way to overcome its backwardness in relation to the West. That was through the fullest possible takeover of Western European cultural, economic, and social standards, including the prevailing notions about the Orient. Nevertheless, even the “pro-Asian” Slavophiles and Eurasians did not so much believe in a Russian-Asian symmetrical reciprocity, but rather in Russia’s special responsibility toward the East in its educational mission of civilization. This is a specifically Russian, but nevertheless an orientalist, habit of thinking. Regardless of which intellectual school we consider, Russian debates about the Orient concerned not only the relationship between Russians and Asians or the colonial other, but also Russia’s position in an imaginary European civilization—and Russia was at the bottom of the league. The attention paid, for example, by Dostoevsky to the East was therefore also an expression of internalized feelings of inferiority toward civilized Europe. Especially after the inglorious end of the Crimean War, many

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Russian intellectuals felt somehow excluded from the private club that was Europe. Dostoevsky expressed this in the following manner: in Europe the Russians were only “eaters of the bread of charity and slaves,” but in Asia Russians were the masters: “In Europe we were Tatars, but in Asia we are Europeans, too. Our mission, our civilizing mission in Asia will entice our mind and take us there, if only once the movement begins.”77 The seemingly special feature of Russian orientalism resulted from this ambivalence of the Tsarist Empire as a colonial power and as an object of (at least mental) colonization at the same time. Russian orientalism is an attempt at the collective self-positioning of the Russian elites between an essentialized East and an equally essentialized West. It is within this field of tension that one can locate the deployment of Russian orientalistic discourse, which in many aspects can be identified with a general European movement. Russian orientalism, though, was an attempt not only to gain intellectual domination over the so-called Orient, but also to reassure the Russians themselves that theirs was a civilized, European power that was capable—despite all its peculiarities—of intellectually and practically ruling and controlling its empire; part and parcel of this was the orientalist way of thinking. Can the vexed question of the applicability of Said’s Orientalism to the Russian case at least be answered provisionally? If we no longer speak of just one orientalism (à la Britain or France, which were also more heterogeneous than Said thought), but of variations of orientalisms, the question becomes superfluous. A couple of years ago Jürgen Osterhammel, an acknowledged specialist in this field, wrote: Only if you risk extreme exaggerations, can you get . . . across space, time, and national-cultural settings to generalizations about the worldview of the agency of colonialism and colonial domination.78

The risk is avoidable if one accepts that there is not just one form of colonialism or just one form of imperialism in the global context. Further explorations of orientalism and imperial rule on the micro level might help.

Notes This chapter builds on my article “Wo liegt das russische Morgenland? OrientDiskurs und imperiale Herrschaft im Zarenreich,” in Orientalismen in Ostmitteleuropa, ed. Robert Born and Sarah Lemmen (Bielefeld: Transcript, forthcoming). 1

Wayne S. Vucinich, ed., Russia and Asia: Essays on the Influence of Russia on the Asian Peoples (Stanford: Hoover Institute Press, 1972). 2

For critical comments on Said and Orientalism see, e.g., James Clifford, “On Orientalism,” in The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography,

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Literature, and Art, ed. James Clifford (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988), 255–76, here 266; and for a German perspective, Jürgen Osterhammel, “Edward W. Said und die ‘Orientalismus’-Debatte: Ein Rückblick,” asien afrika amerika 25 (1997): 597–607. 3

In selection: Izabela Kalinowska, Between East and West: Polish and Russian Nineteenth-Century Travel to the Orient (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004); Susan Layton, Russian Literature and Empire: Conquest of the Caucasus from Pushkin to Tolstoy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Harsha Ram, The Imperial Sublime: A Russian Poetics of Empire (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2003); Monika Greenleaf and Stephen Moeller-Sally, eds., Russian Subjects: Empire, Nation, and the Culture of the Golden Age (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1998); Daniel R. Brower and Edward J. Lazzarini, eds., Russia’s Orient: Imperial Borderlands and Peoples, 1700–1917 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997). German historians on East European history were much more reluctant to use Said’s concept; for the reasons see: Kerstin S. Jobst, “‘Orientalism,’ E. W. Said und die Osteuropäische Geschichte,” Saeculum: Jahrbuch für Universalgeschichte 51 (2000), 2:250–66. For an international discussion on postcolonial studies and a reappraisal of Russia as an empire, see the journal Ab Imperio (in Russian and English), and its theoretical manifesto: I. V. Gerasimov et al., eds., Novaia imperskaia istoriia postsovetskogo prostranstva: Sbornik statei [New Imperial History of the Post-Soviet Space: A Collection of Essays] (Kazan’: Biblioteka zhurnala “Ab Imperio,” 2004). 4

See Larry Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization in the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994). 5

For the Habsburg monarchy and the Ottoman Empire as other continental empires, see Kerstin S. Jobst, Julia Obertreis, and Ricarda Vulpius, “Imperiumsforschung in der Osteuropäischen Geschichte: Die Habsburgermonarchie, das Russländische Reich und die Sowjetunion,” in Ostmitteleuropa transnational. Special issue of Zeitschrift Comparativ, ed. Peter Haslinger: 18, no. 2 (2008), 27–56, here 29–32. 6

“Große Mehrheit der Russen fühlt sich nicht als Europäer,” Der-Tagespiegel. de, February 9, 2007, http://www.tagesspiegel.de/politik/international/ umfrage-grosse-mehrheit-der-russen-fuehlt-sich-nicht-als-europaeer/809096. html (accessed 2 January 2012). 7

David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 10. The author examines the Saidian parameters vostokovedenie (oriental studies) and “culture” in general.

8

Ibid., 9.

9

For a theoretical approach on the concept of imperial rule instead of imperialism, see Aleksej Miller and Alfred J. Rieber, “Introduction,” in Imperial Rule, ed. Miller and Rieber (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2004), 1–8; here 1–2. 10

Robert Irwin, For the Lust of Knowing: The Orientalists and Their Enemies (London: Penguin Books, 2006).

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11

Jürgen Osterhammel, “Rußland und der Vergleich zwischen Imperien: Einige Anknüpfungspunkte,” in Haslinger, Ostmitteleuropa transnational, here 16. 12

Stefan Simonek, “Möglichkeiten und Grenzen postkolonialistischer Literaturtheorie aus slawistischer Sicht,” in Habsburg Postcolonial, ed. Johannes Feichtinger, Ursula Prutsch, and Moritz Csáky (Innsbruck: Studienverlag, 2003), 130–31. In his discussion of Austria-Hungary he defines the imperialistic attitudes of the non-German and non-Hungarian agents toward the allegedly underdeveloped people, especially in the peripheries of the monarchy, as “microcolonialism” (Mikrokolonialismus). 13

Andre Gingrich, “Frontier Myths of Orientalism: The Muslim World in Public and Popular Cultures of Central Europe,” in Mediterranean Ethnological Summerschool (MESS), Bd. 2, Ljubilana 1996, 99–127; and Gingrich, “Österreichische Identitäten und Orientbilder: Eine ethnologische Kritik,” in Wir und die Anderen: Islam, Literatur und Migration, ed. Walter Dostal, Helmuth A. Niederle, and Karl R. Wernhart (Vienna: WUV Universitätsverlag, 1999), 29–34. 14

See Sarah Lemmen’s contribution to this volume.

15

Andrea Polaschegg’s suggestion in Der andere Orientalismus: Regeln deutschmorgenländischer Imagination im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2005) that intercultural study—at least in the German case—is based on dialectics between familiarity and strangeness, rather than between the self and the other, is not so clear in the Russian case at first glance. It needs further investigation and should be observed in another, broader study. Basically, concerning for example the Polish or the Ukrainian case, the consequence of proximity (in cultural, denominational, or ethnic terms, etc.) was a harsher colonial regime compared with Muslim territories like the Crimea.

16

See Mark Bassin, Imperial Visions: Nationalist Imagination and Geographical Expansion in the Russian Far East, 1840–1865 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999); see also Bassin, “Inventing Siberia: Visions of the Russian East in the Early Nineteenth Century,” American Historical Review 93 (1991): 763–94. 17

In Russia, the border between Europe and Asia was determined along the Ural Mountains and the Kumo-Manych sink in 1730. This decision was based on the measurements of the Swedish geographer Philip Johan von Strahlenberg (1676– 1747); outside Russia this line was discussed controversially. 18

Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 3rd ed. (London: Penguin, 2003), 4–5.

19

Ibid., 1.

20

See Roman Loimeier, “Edward Said und die deutschsprachige Orientalistik,” Stichproben 55, no. 2 (2001): 63–85; and Robert Irwin, “Edward Said’s Shadow Legacy,” Times Literary Supplement, May 7, 2008, who stresses the great importance of academic Hungarian orientalist studies for an all-European professionalization, equally ignored by Said. 21

Michael Rywkin, “Introduction,” in Russian Colonial Expansion to 1917, ed. Michael Rywkin (London: Mansell, 1987), xii, assumes that Muslim residents in the Russian discourse were considered as inferior since the end of the sixteenth century. Sara Dickinson, “Russia’s First ‘Orient’: Characterizing the Crimea in 1787,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 3, no. 1 (2002):

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3–25, esp. 3, argues in contrast that Asia was not presented as inferior in Russian debates up to the end of the eighteenth century. 22

Willard Sunderland, Taming the Wild Field: Colonization and Empire on the Russian Steppe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004); Michael Khodarkovsky, Russia’s Steppe Frontier: The Making of a Colonial Empire, 1500–1800 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002). 23

Here I follow the German translation: Edward W. Said, Kultur und Imperialismus (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 1994), 45. 24

See A. I. Alekseev, The Destiny of Russian America, 1741–1867 (Fairbanks: Limestone Press, 1990). Basil Dmytryshin, E. A. P. Crownhart-Vaughan, and Thomas Vaughan, eds., The Russian American Colonies, 1789–1867 (Portland: Oregon Historical Society Press, 1989). 25

Andreas Kappeler, Rußland als Vielvölkerreich: Entstehung, Geschichte, Zerfall (Munich: Beck, 1992), 56, stresses this fact. 26

Said, Orientalism, 1.

27

Ibid., 83–89.

28

For the history of Russian oriental studies see: David Schimmpenninck van der Oye and Richard N. Frye, “Oriental Studies in Russia,” in Vucinich, Russia and Asia, 30–51 and 369–75. Mark Batunsky, “Racism in Russian Islamology: Agafangel Krimsky,” Central Asian Survey 4 (1992): 75–84. Mark Batunsky, “Russian Clerical Islamic Studies in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,” Central Asian Survey 6 (1994): 213–35. Cynthia H. Whittaker, “The Impact of the Oriental Renaissance in Russia: The Case of Sergej Uvarov,” Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 26 (1978): 503–24. 29

“Rech’ po sluchaiu otkrytiia v S. Peterburgskom universitete fakul’teta vostochnykh jazykov, proiznesennaia dekanom onogo, ord. prof. Kazembekom” [Speech at the Opening of the Faculty of Oriental Languages at the University of St. Petersburg Held by a Dean, the Full Professor Kazembek], Zhurnal Ministerstva Narodnogo Prosveshcheniia 23 (1856), vol. 87, 2, 12–22. 30

V. V. Bartol’d, Istoriia izuchenia Vostoka v Evrope i Rossii [History of the Study of the Orient in Europe and Russia], 2nd ed. (Leningrad: Instytut zhivych vostochnych jazykov, 1925). See also the French and the German versions: Bartolde, La découverte de l’Asie: Histoire de l’orientalisme en Europe et en Russe (Paris: Payot, 1947), Bartold, Die geographische und historische Erforschung des Orients mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der russischen Arbeiten (Frankfurt am Main: Publications of the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science, 1995). 31

Said, Orientalism, 96.

32

Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism, 9.

33

See ibid., 151, the example of the Orthodox priest and Sinologist Father Hyacinth, who “was perhaps too sympathetic to those he studied.” 34

Said, Orientalism, 204.

35

V. D. Smirnov, Krymskoe Khanstvo pod verchovenstvom Otomanskoi Porty do nachala XVIII veka [The Crimean Khanate under the Suzerainty of the Ottoman Porte until the Beginning of the Eighteenth Century] (Odessa: Shulce, 1887).

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Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism, 129–39.

37

Bartol’d, Das kulturelle Leben in Turkistan: Zur Geschichte des turkmenischen Volkes (Berlin: Schletter, 2009), was published from the Russian text of 1927. 38 For Ill’minskii, see Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism, 138–39. For Bartol’d and Smirnov, see Kerstin S. Jobst, Die Perle des Imperiums: Der russische Krim-Diskurs im Zarenreich (Konstanz: UVK-Verlagsgesellschaft, 2007), 178. 39

Frye, “Oriental Studies in Russia,” 46.

40

See Said’s memoirs of his youth in the Arabic world: Edward W. Said, Out of Place: A Memoir (London: Knopf, 1999). 41

Konstantin F. Shteppa, “The Lesser Evil Formula,” in Rewriting Russian History, ed. C. E. Black (New York: Praeger, 1956), 107–20. 42

See Vera Tolz, “European, National, and (Anti-)Imperial: The Formation of Academic Oriental Studies in Later Tsarist and Early Soviet Studies,” in Orientalism and Empire in Russia, ed. Michael David-Fox, Peter Holquist, and Alexander Martin (Bloomington: Slavica 2006), 133–34. 43

Said mentioned India as an example, which played a decisive role in British discourse on the Orient: “The ‘good’ Orient was invariably a classical period somewhere in a long-gone India” (Orientalism, 99). 44

For a comparative approach and further exploration of these land empires, see Jobst, Obertreis, and Vulpius, “Imperiumsforschung.” 45 Charles M. Maier, Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006), 43. 46

The Great Reforms of the 1860s were introduced in these regions, but not, for example, in Central Asia. For the juridical reforms in general, see, for example, Jörg Baberowski, Autokratie und Justiz: Zum Verhältnis von Rechtsstaatlichkeit und Rückständigkeit im ausgehenden Zarenreich, 1864–1914 (Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann, 1996), 339–427. 47

See Kappeler, Rußland als Vielvölkerreich. See also Kerstin S. Jobst, “Die transkontinentale Expansion im Zarenreich,” in Imperialkriege von 1500 bis heute: Strukturen, Akteure, Lernprozesse, ed. Tanja Bührer, Christian Stachelbeck, and Dierk Walter (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2011), 55–72. 48

John W. Slocum, “Who, and When, Were the Inorodtsy? The Evolution of the Category of ‘Aliens’ in Imperial Russia,” Russian Review 57 (1998): 173–90. 49

Russian landowners complained about preferential treatment of the Tatar peasants, and pointed to their cultural backwardness and disloyalty to the tsar. See Nikolai S. Mordvinov, “O povinnostiakh poselian za zemliu v Krymu” [On the Obligations of the Settlers for the Land on the Crimea], November 18, 1820, in Arkhiv Grafov Mordvinovykh. Predislovie i primechaniia V. A. Bil’basova [The Archives of Count Mordvinov. Preface and Notes by V. A. Bil’basov], vol. 5 (S-Peterburg: Tip. J. N. Skorochodova, 1902), 521–40. For an interpretation of Mordvinov’s classical orientalistic repertoire, see Jobst, Perle des Imperiums, 225–32. 50

Aleksandr M. Gorchakov in S. S. Tatishshev, Imperator Aleksandr II: Ego zhizn’ i carstvovanie [Imperator Alexander II: His Life and His Reign], vol. 2 (S-Peterburg: Kharli, 1903), 115–16.

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51

For an example of a discourse on the so-called inorodtsy, see Susi K. Frank, Imperiale Aneignung: Diskursive Strategien der Kolonisation Sibiriens durch die russische Kultur (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2013). 52

On the “privileged” Crimea, see Jobst, Perle des Imperiums, 117–286.

53

For examples of more or less subtle effeminizations of the male other, see Jobst, “Bilder des indigenen Kriegers in der russischen Kultur,” in Soldaten im Einsatz: Sozialwissenschaftliche und ethische Reflexionen, ed. Stefan Bayer and Matthias Gillner (Berlin: Duncker & Humblot, 2011), 195–97. 54

Layton, Russian Literature and Empire, and Layton, “Nineteenth-Century Russian Mythologies of Caucasian Savagery,” in Brower and Lazzerini, Russia’s Orient, 80–100. 55

A Hero of Our Time was written between 1837 and 1840. The oriental woman Bela loves the Russian protagonist Pechorin sincerely and deeply but without any hope of a long and happy relationship because of his cynical and nihilistic character. 56

Suzan Layton explores this in Russian Literature and Empire.

57

Nikolai Iu. Danilevskii, Rossiia i Evropa: Vzgliad na kul’turnye i politicheskoe otnosheniia slavianskogo mira k germano-romanskomu [Russia and Europe: A View of the Cultural and Political Relations between the Slavic and the GermanRoman World] (Moscow: Kniga, 1991), 24–25. 58

Mordvinov, “O povinnostiakh poselian,” 5:viii.

59

Ibid., 521.

60

Mark Bassin, “Geographien imperialer Identität: Russland im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert,” in Kolonial Geschichten: Regionale Perspektiven auf ein globales Phänomen, ed. Claudia Kraft, Alf Lüdtke, and Jürgen Martschukat (Frankfurt: Campus, 2010), 247. 61

Jobst, Obertreis, and Vulpius, “Imperiumsforschung,” 39.

62

W. Kliutschewskij (V. O. Kliuchevskii), Geschichte Rußlands, 4 vols. (Berlin: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1925), 1:19. For the Russian original, see: V. O. Kliuchevskii, Kurs russkoi istorii [The Course of Russian History], 5 vols. (Moscow: Gosudarstvennoe izdannie politicheskoi literatury, 1956), 1:31. 63

Theodore Roosevelt, “Address at the Dedication Ceremonies of the Louisiana Purchase Exposition,” April 30, 1903, http://www.theodore-roosevelt.com/ trlouisespospeech.html (accessed 1 January 2012). 64

Frank Schumacher, “Kulturtransfer und Empire: Britisches Vorbild und USamerikanische Kolonialherrschaft im frühen 20. Jahrhundert,” in Kraft, Lüdtke, and Martschukat, Kolonial Geschichten, 306–27. For the Habsburg monarchy, see Jobst, Obertreis, and Vulpius, “Imperiumsforschung,” 32–38, and the references there. 65

For Catherine II’s famous tour to the South, see Dickinson, “Russia’s First ‘Orient.’” See also Kerstin S. Jobst, “Die Taurische Reise von 1787 als Beginn der Mythisierung der Krim: Bemerkungen zum europäischen Krim-Diskurs des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts,” Archiv für Kulturgeschichte 83 (2001): 121–44. 66

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67

Peter Stachel, “Der koloniale Blick auf Bosnien-Herzegowina in der ethnographischen Popularliteratur der Habsburgermonarchie,” in Feichtinger, et al., Habsburg Postcolonial, 259–76. 68

See the special issue “Empire, Migration, and the Fears of Interracial Sex, c. 1830–1938,” Gender and History 17 (2005): 5–209. 69

For a detailed discussion see Jobst, Perle des Imperiums, 213–15.

70

“‘Gosudar’ Nikolai Pavlovich v avtobiograficheskikh rasskazov byvshego kavkazskogo oficera” [Ruler Nikolai Pavlovich in the Autobiographical Anecdotes of a Former Officer in the Caucasus] Russkii Arkhiv 19, no. 2 (1881): 232–40. 71 In general, Jürgen Osterhammel, Kolonialismus: Geschichte, Formen, Folgen (Munich: Beck, 1995). For the Dutch Batavia, see Jean Taylor, The Social World of Batavia (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983). 72

For the Russian Empire, see: Kerstin S. Jobst, “Die Wahrnehmung von Assimilations- und Akkulturationsprozessen im russischen Krim-Diskurs vor dem Ersten Weltkrieg,” in Gemeinsam getrennt: Lebenswelten der multiethnischen bäuerlichen Bevölkerung im Schwarzmeer- und Wolgagebiet vor 1917, ed. Victor Herdt and Dietmar Neutatz (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2010), 181–94. See also in general Eva Gugenberger and Kathrin Sartingen, Hybridität—Transkulturalität—Kreolisierung: Innovation und Wandel in Kultur, Sprache und Literatur Lateinamerikas (Berlin: LIT.-Verlag, 2011). 73

Marc Raeff, “Un empire comme les autres?,” Cahiers du monde russe et soviétique 30, nos. 3–4 (1989): 321–28. 74

Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism, 239.

75

See e.g. Peter J. S. Duncan, Russian Messianism: Third Rome, Revolution, Communism, and After (London: Routledge, 2000); Milan Hauner, What Is Asia to Us? Russia’s Asian Heartland Yesterday and Today (Boston: Unwin Hymann, 1990). For the Eurasian movement, see Stefan Wiederkehr, Die eurasische Bewegung: Wissenschaft und Politik in der russischen Emigration der Zwischenkriegszeit und im postsowjetischen Russland (Vienna: Böhlau, 2007).

76

See e.g. Margaret B. Merrill, The Westernizer Circle in Russia in the 1840s (Ann Arbor: University Microfilms International, 1982). 77

Fyodor M. Dostoevsky, “Dnevnik pisatelja za 1881 god” (A Writer’s Diary for 1881), in Polnoe sobranie sochinenij, vol. 27, ed. V.G Bazanov (Leningrad: Nauka, 1984), 33. 78

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11: Noncolonial Orientalism? Czech Travel Writing on Africa and Asia around 1918 Sarah Lemmen

I. Introduction

W

1927 THE Czech Egyptologist Ludmila Matiegková (1889– 1960) set out with fellow travel companions for Egypt to marvel at its ancient culture, she was confronted with her role as a tourist, a European, a woman, a scholar, and a Czech. Even though her published travelogue1 did not explicitly discuss her national identity or what it meant to be a Czech in Cairo, it still produced an implicit and ambivalent picture of Czech identity in a colonial setting: while Ludmila Matiegková painted a picture of the “magic of the Orient”2 that seems to reproduce general orientalist topoi, she distanced herself at the same time from those with whom she shared these figures of thought, namely, European colonial society in Egypt. This ambivalent position, present in Czech travelogues from across the so-called Orient, will be at the center of this chapter as it discusses a form of orientalism that is not based on direct or explicit colonial interests or overseas possessions. It argues, rather, for a “noncolonial orientalism”: by concentrating on Czech travelers and their travelogues on the Orient in the five decades surrounding the end of the First World War and the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic in 1918, the chapter reconstructs a specific mode of “orientalizing” the Orient, which occurred outside of any direct colonial power relations. The aim is to show that while the Czech orientalist discourse contains general motifs similar to a “Western” or “colonial” orientalism, it also locates Czech society in opposition to Western European empires. It is no coincidence that the time frame examined was a period of very active tourism to the Orient, as it is in the role of tourists that most Czech travelers had the chance to visit these places, and it is as tourists that their position differed from that of the colonial servants or diplomats as representatives of their empires.3 The term “noncolonial orientalism” is proposed here as a deliberate demarcation from the concept of a “classical” orientalism, which is generally HEN IN

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based on direct (military and/or political) power relations,4 such as the British orientalist view of India or Egypt,5 or French representations of Algeria.6 At the same time, the imperial attitude of representatives of these great empires and their sense of belonging to a powerful state shaped their views and perceptions even during trips outside their own colonial world, as studies on US travelers in Europe or on British citizens in China have shown.7 Czech society had no similar overseas involvement. In fact, one may even stress the contrary: especially before 1918, while the Bohemian lands still constituted an integral part of Austria-Hungary, self-images of being “oppressed” or “colonized” by the Austrian Empire were present in Czech public discourse and arguably increased with the growth of the national movement,8 and the prevalent self-understanding of the Czech nation as “small” points in the same direction.9 If Czech society does not quite fit with either side of the dichotomy of colonizer and colonized, it may be suggested that the metageographical oppositional terms10 “Orient” and “Occident” also work only in a limited fashion for Czech society around 1918. Following the argument of Larry Wolff, eastern Europe (explicitly beginning in Prague) was considered “non-Western” or “semi-European” throughout the period from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries.11 Even if these categories oscillate more often than not—the term “eastern European” retains its European identity, but “Western” is mostly understood as Western European and North American12—, it still shows how the clear-cut binaries become blurred at the edges: for Czech society, the Orient was still the “other,” but the Occident was not necessarily the “self.” In the light of the complex Czech position vis-à-vis Europe and the socalled Orient, this chapter first reflects in greater depth on the idea of a “noncolonial orientalism.” It proceeds to discuss the whereabouts of a “Czech Orient.” In a third step, a rough overview of Czech engagement in the Orient will be sketched out, while in a fourth step, the discussion will turn to topoi of orientalism in Czech travelogues, mainly lingering on the concept of “civilization” as a principle of world order. And, finally, the focus will turn to the travelers in the tourist hubs of the time, arguing that it is a specific “noncolonial orientalism” that provides for a Czech position outside the worlds of both the oriental other and European colonial society.

II. Three Arguments for a “Noncolonial Orientalism” Three arguments may be put forward to outline the idea of a “noncolonial orientalism.” First, while the classical studies on orientalism, beginning with Edward Said’s pioneering Orientalism, argue for the importance of an understanding of orientalism as part of colonial power relations, and

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therefore focus explicitly on the West, or more precisely on Great Britain, France, as well as the United States,13 this chapter approaches the topic from a somewhat different angle. Lacking direct colonial power relations, the study of “noncolonial orientalism” rather examines representations of world order and how they were deployed in order to define the global role of Czech society. This leads to the second argument. Studies on orientalism tend to argue at the national or imperial levels. Research has been done on French, British, Russian, or German orientalisms, and extended to Polish, Japanese, or Ottoman orientalisms.14 This chapter, however, even though it is based solely on Czech sources, avoids the term “Czech orientalism,” but rather operates with the concept of a “noncolonial orientalism.” While this approach does not question the validity of national orientalisms as such,15 it does shift the emphasis to another decisive factor, arguing for the importance of the personal noninvolvement of the Czech travelers in colonial expansion or in established colonial societies to which they traveled. Studies have shown that British travelers, as civil servants in the colonial administration, as military officers, or even as regular tourists, were usually involved in some way or another in the preservation and maintaining of the empire.16 Czech travelers, on the other hand, did not have the possibility of representing a world power or the need to legitimize an empire. Their orientalist views, therefore, were not a tool for the preservation of power structures, but were coined by their experience as tourists. Consequently, the third argument concerns the deployment of the model of “noncolonial orientalism.” While various studies have argued for a European orientalism, based on the similarity of representations of the Orient in paintings, literature, the opera, or everyday commodities throughout Europe,17 this chapter argues that it is on location, in the Orient, where differences between various European representations of the Orient appear. It is on location where Czech travelers had to deal with real or imagined power relations and had to find a position suitable for them: by deploying a “noncolonial orientalism,” they created a third space outside the dichotomy of “colonizer” and “colonized.” Therefore, “noncolonial orientalism” reveals more about the orientalizing society than the orientalized world; the focus is rather on the Czech self and its global position than on the (oriental) other.18

III. The Location of a Czech Orient If this chapter is on orientalism, albeit a noncolonial one, the first question to ask is where the Orient was located in Czech discourse. The Orient has been defined differently in varying languages and in varying times; the historian Ussama S. Makdisi argues that in modern times, “every nation creates its own Orient.”19 Various European powers have defined

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the term “Orient” according to their colonial interests in the East, especially—it has been argued—in the cases of Great Britain and France.20 In the Czech case, it seems less obvious to define the Orient in terms of colonial or other such interests. As a first starting point, one might refer to the major encyclopedias of the time. The Ottův slovník naučný [Otto’s Encyclopedia],21 considered the Czech national encyclopedia of the nineteenth century, offers little insight into the geographical whereabouts of the Orient. The relevant volume, published in 1902, stresses the changing locations of the Orient: while historically the “areas east of Italy” were considered part of the Orient, “now, [the term] Orient refers to Asia Minor, Syria, and Egypt.”22 Reflecting the Zeitgeist of the interwar period, the Masarykův slovník naučný [Masaryk’s Encyclopedia],23 published in the years 1925 to 1933 and intended as a modern (and slimmer) version of Otto’s Encyclopedia, presents a wider definition of the Orient, as it includes in its concept of the region the Atlas Mountains, the Sahara, Arabia with Syria and Mesopotamia, as well as Asia Minor with Iran.24 If these textbook definitions concentrated on the area surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, including Asia Minor and beyond, then the everyday use of the word seems to have been broader and encompassed South East and East Asia. The term “Orient,” along with its derivatives or synonyms such as “oriental” or “eastern,” including references to the “country where the sun rises,”25 is often (though not excessively) used in the travelogues discussed here to refer to a broad geographical range, including Northern Africa and most of Asia.26 With neither direct nor indirect colonial interests, the geographical concept of the Orient was a rather general one in the Czech context. This chapter proceeds from this insight and selects a broad range of travelogues to reflect the full scope of oriental destinations. Included are Czech travelogues on Northern Africa and Asia written in the four decades surrounding the First World War. Travelogues did not only “produce . . . ‘the rest of the world’ for European readerships,”27 but also took part in constructing and reframing national identity, as travelers tended to reflect openly on national questions and, in so doing, also offered what the historian Michael Harbsmeier calls an “involuntary cultural self description.”28 At the same time, travelogues do not describe what is, but how it was perceived by the traveler-cum-writer.29 In this sense, the orientalist discourse can be understood not only as the “image of the other,” but also as a “mirror of the self,” as it offers a glimpse into the perceptions of the Czech whereabouts on a global mental map.

IV. Noncolonial Czech Interests in the Orient The travelers discussed here were by no means the only or indeed the earliest mediators between the Czech nation and the Orient. In the

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nineteenth and twentieth centuries (and earlier), there was a wide range of contact between Bohemian territories and the Orient, though the matter has remained underresearched and even less acknowledged in scholarship. It is not by coincidence that one of the most famous and most quoted travelogues in the Czech language was by the nobleman, humanist writer, and traveler Kryštof Harant z Polžic a Bezdružic (1564–1621) about his travels via Venice to Jerusalem and further on to Egypt.30 This travelogue from 1608, reprinted both in 1854 and in 1926, served as a travel guide and reference for Czech travelers for more than three hundred years well into the interwar period.31 Subsequently, the Orient became a general topic of interest in Bohemian society. In line with overall European developments, a cultural reception of oriental topics and motifs was to be found also in the Bohemian lands, especially since the nineteenth century:32 Oriental paintings, exotic commodities and fashion accessories, operas like Wolfgang Mozart’s The Abduction from the Seraglio, but also travelogues and novels about the Orient were as popular within the Bohemian lands as they were throughout the rest of Europe. At first, the preoccupation with the Orient was mostly ornamental in nature: architecture and decorative and fine arts were influenced by a thriving “Egyptomania” in Bohemia.33 Later the study of the Orient was professionalized through the founding of oriental studies at the university in Prague; in the interwar years, Prague became an internationally well-respected location for oriental studies, with professors as renowned as the orientalist Alois Musil and Indologists such as Moriz Winternitz and Otakar Pertold. In the economic sphere, the Orient was considered a “safe haven” for Czechoslovak export, and close relations with the Orient were promoted by, among others, the Oriental Institute,34 the Společnost pro hospodářské a kulturní styky s Černomořím a Orientem [Association for Economic and Cultural Relations with the Black Sea and the Orient], and the Masarykova Akademie Práce [Masaryk Academy of Labor], all of which propagated in their statutes the expansion of economic exchange with the Orient or with the non-European world in general.35 In long-distance tourism, the Orient led the way of popular destinations since the late nineteenth century, offering to a growing middle class the possibility to visit the ancient pyramids in Egypt, the Indian treasures of the Mughal period, or the religious sites in Palestine. This general interest in the Orient, sketched briefly here, follows a wider European trend. During the interwar years, however, there were voices that proposed a “special relationship” between the noncolonial Czech society and the Orient, as the discussions surrounding the founding of the Oriental Institute show. Already in 1919, first propositions were made for the founding of such an institute in Prague. It was the extensively traveled and widely respected orientalist and theologian Alois Musil (1868–1944) who, following his broad research activities in the

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Arab world and, consecutively, his professorship at the University of Vienna, moved to Prague shortly after the founding of the Czechoslovak Republic, where he presented a first scheme for an oriental institute to the newly elected president of Czechoslovakia, Tomáš G. Masaryk, and argued for the importance of close relations with the Orient for the new state:36 His memorandum, supported by the head of state, was published in the journal Naše doba [Our time] under the heading “Naše úkoly v Orientalistice a v Orientě” [Our tasks in oriental studies and in the Orient] in 1920 and called for a strong Czechoslovak engagement with the Orient. Such an oriental institute, Musil stressed, was not to be considered a “luxury” for the new state but was, on the contrary, quite necessary for the development of Czechoslovakia, especially concerning its economic interests in a global perspective. “The Orient makes up a large part of those countries abroad that are important for us,” Musil argued, and listed a wide range of relations with the Orient: not only did he underline the cultural importance of the Orient as “the cradle of all our culture,” but he also stressed the strong economic interests in that region, based both on the export of numerous products and the import of raw material.37 Finally, but of no less importance to Musil, he referred to the possibility of sending specialists and skilled workers to the Orient, a move that would solve several urgent issues at once. It would decrease the unemployment rate without losing Czechoslovak citizens to Western European countries or to North America, and it would stabilize the relationship with the Orient. The Orient, Musil assured, would profit tremendously from this deal. According to him, Czechoslovakia was in a unique position: while other Central European countries were lacking skilled labor themselves and the Western powers were eyed suspiciously in the Orient for any ulterior interests, Czechoslovakia was not only one of the few countries able to send skilled personnel, but also one whose citizens would be received with open arms, as “we don’t have any political or religious second thoughts” in relation to the Orient.38 The noncolonial past and present, it was argued, was an advantage of the republic’s role in the new world order. As a highly developed country with a surplus of skilled workers, and at the same time as a “small nation” with no colonial history, Czechoslovakia seemed predestined to become the main (economic) partner for the Orient and possibly beyond. Musil urged that “[it] is necessary to commence now if we don’t want to come late and lose this opportunity, which Allah provides only once in a century.”39 Despite the urgent appeal by Musil and a broad base of support from economists and orientalists, businessmen and traders, various ministries and the president of the republic, it took almost ten years to set up the institute. This, however, did not prevent Czechoslovak relations with the Orient from growing in the cultural, economic, and political spheres.40

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V. Deploying a “Noncolonial Orientalism” As we have seen, the Orient was not only generally a topos present in Czech society, but was also considered an important economic and cultural partner. The focus will now shift to orientalist representations on location, that is, in the Orient: While certain orientalist topoi were used to establish a common “European” identity vis-à-vis the oriental other, at the same time Czech travelers distanced themselves from colonial responsibilities and from European colonial society by describing their position as tourists and placing themselves, therefore, in a category outside colonial logic. The travelogues offer a wide range of general European orientalist perceptions, whereby the description of the oriental other sounds astoundingly similar to what has been said about the others of the colonial British or French. However, postcolonial theory argues convincingly that Europeans’ views of their oriental others were influenced by colonial relationships. If the inverse were true, namely, that a noncolonial context could result in an East-West relationship with a different dynamic, and, by the same token, if one refuses to take for granted that Czech travelers simply copied Western stereotypes, there might be another way of interpreting similarities between Czech and other European descriptions of the oriental other. Through close reading of the travelogues an image of a collective “European identity” emerges.41 The Czech travelers defined themselves as Europeans and used this to distinguish clearly between themselves and their oriental others, thereby following classical orientalist strategies. All the negative attributes of the Orient stood in contrast to positive European attributes, so that clear dichotomies were created: implicitly or explicitly, civilization stood against the primitive; European hygiene stood against dirt, chaos, and disease in the Orient; monogamy stood against polygamy. The “shabbily dressed Arab” would imply the clean attire of the Czech; the “deceiving Chinese” would signify the honest European. In this respect, Czech society became part of the West, and, therefore, of the colonizing world. In these clear-cut and stereotypical dichotomies of a “civilized Europe” versus a “barbaric Orient,” the Czech travelers seem to join the well-known chorus of (West) European orientalism. However, a closer look at the travelogues, here focusing on the topos of “civilization,” reveals the same ambivalence, with Czech tourists presenting themselves as not part of the East, but not quite part of the West either. Interestingly, while the representation of many issues—especially regarding questions of (national) identity or concepts of world order—changed drastically during the period in focus and particularly around 1918, the interpretation of “civilization” proved quite persistent and unchanging between the 1890s and the 1930s, thereby confirming the classical orientalist dichotomy of

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a civilized Europe and an uncivilized Orient over and over again. In most travelogues the topos of “civilization” was discussed either as something “missing” in the visited regions or as a positive “European” influence in an otherwise uncivilized area. In the rhetoric of most travelogues, “civilization” was a purely European phenomenon, introduced to improve the non-European world.42 Thereby, the understanding of “civilization” proves to be a fairly homogeneous one, strongly connected to technological developments. Throughout the entire fifty-year period, the travelogues regarded as “traces of civilization,”43 among other things, military barracks in Egypt44 and the railroad network in Tunisia45—both of these in travelogues written during the first decade of the century—, as well as the highways in Morocco,46 the new harbor in Yemen,47 or, taken to literal extremes, car tracks in the desert sand recorded in travelogues around 1930.48 Various travelogues discussed the changes that came with the implementation of this kind of civilization, which was closely connected to modernization and also to colonization. The implementation of these innovations was not only seen as a contribution of a European “civilizing mission,” but it was also interpreted as a victory in a cultural, symbolic, political, and economic conflict over hegemony in these regions. When as early as 1894 the writer František Klement described the opening of the railway line between Jaffa and Jerusalem only two years earlier, he depicted a transport revolution, as this was the first railroad in the Near East. He presented this event as a contest between Europe and the Arab world, which, in the end, the railway—and with it Europe and modern civilization—had won. The new railroad represented speed, comfort, and convenience. The previous travel modes, by camel or horse, were connected to backwardness, tardiness, and worse: according to Klement, the riding traveler was subjected to robbery, danger, dirt, and the obligatory begging for Baksheesh, not to mention the crooked innkeeper exploiting the travelers on the road from Jaffa to Jerusalem.49 The antiquated camel ride through the desert, accompanied by “plundering Arabs,” “cunning dragomans,” and “crooks,”50 was according to Klement history by now: the arrival of the railway offered a symbolic and logistical victory for (European) civilization. Forty years later, a similar understanding of colonization as modernization is included in the remarks of the journalist Viktor Mussik, who traveled to Abyssinia in 1935. While commenting on the lack of colonialism and, consequently, modernization in what was one of the very few independent states in Africa, he viewed his trip as a “journey to the Middle ages,” as the title of his travelogue suggests.51 Not using the term “civilization” but hinting in the same direction is the zoologist Jiří Baum, who traveled in 1931 by car from Cairo to Cape Town. When describing his border crossing from Egypt to Sudan, he praised the professional stand of the Sudanese border guards, who—according to Baum—mastered easily

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the logistic and administrative tasks. Baum credits this to the “beneficial influence of the British administration,” while in Egypt such a crossing would have been a matter of “ranting, begging, and the handing out of Baksheesh.”52 All these negative attributes represent essential features in the description of the Orient in general and reproduce the basic dualistic principle of Occident versus Orient. There is one more twist to the use of the concept of “civilization” in the Czech travelogues. Civilization was not just seen as a “European project,” but as an “all-encompassing European project.” Czech travelers, although traveling as regular tourists and therefore without any responsibilities within the colonial system, produced through writing an image of belonging to (Western) Europe, of being active in a civilizing mission, and therefore, in a sense, of being part of the colonial world. In this perspective on world order, the Czech nation shed its position as a mere bystander and received its place on the side of the colonizing nations. The reflections of the painter František Šimon during his trip around the world in 1928 can serve as an example. Even though he presents himself constantly in national terms and writes about himself as being Czech, not European, he still “Europeanizes” his talk on civilization. Throughout his text, he builds up a dichotomy between a “modern, progressive, [European] civilization” and an “Asian, traditional, rural culture of the East.”53 In his travelogue, it becomes obvious that he sees the Czech nation as part of the European civilizing mission to foreign regions. Hardly ever did the travelers refer to the “bearer of civilization” in national terms. The aforementioned Jiří Baum gives a rare example of the specific accentuation of a Czech contribution to the civilizing mission. When Baum reflected on an Africa “corrupted by civilization,” he referred to “blacks who go to the cinema, ride bicycles and wear Baťa-shoes.”54 The widespread distribution of shoes from the well-known Czechoslovak shoe company Baťa was therefore interpreted as a contribution to the spread of civilization, but, interestingly, with a negative impact on the local population. This passage evokes the image of an African “noble savage”55 spoiled by civilization, and even here, “civilization” was mostly technical and always European; it can be read as a critique of global (technical) modernization delivered within an otherwise technology-oriented travelogue by the first traveler to drive from Prague to Cape Town by car. This rhetorical strategy aligns the Czech nation with the West and the other colonial powers. While the nation’s relationship to the West was the topic of a debate in Czech society and Central Europe that provided no definitive answers,56 images of the Orient were used in texts such as these to construct a general “Western identity”—if only for a Czech readership. Other examples demonstrate strictly colonial behavior among certain Czech travelers. In the year 1908, the engineer Hanuš Mayer addressed his readers directly and told them how to behave in difficult situations

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overseas. If for example an Egyptian coachman demanded too much money, Mayer suggested the following: “Energetic words, authoritative behavior and merciless beating tame the Arab as such,” and continued, “but the foreigner should possibly avoid this last tool of communication so as not to arouse a bad image and a wrong idea about European civilization.”57 He did not question the opinion that the Arab had to be tamed and that the greedy coachman was to be (or at least could be) beaten. Neither did he question whether or not he, as a tourist in a foreign country, had the right to do so. Although he agreed that public beating did not necessarily represent European behavior, he explained why he thought it necessary once in a while: “The Arab,” he says, “lacks a strong will, energy, everything that we would call a strong character; only with ruthless rigidity is the Arab to be mastered. Lethargy and indifference are the main elements in the character of an oriental.”58 As this example shows, “colonial behavior” was not necessarily linked to colonial rule (as it seems to be argued in many postcolonial studies), but is rather represented as a form of trans-European conduct. This is not the place to discuss whether Czech society took on these values through contact with colonial empires and reading of colonial writing, or whether the hierarchical duality of “Europe” versus “non-Europe” was somehow inscribed in an “all-European” culture. However one might answer these questions, it can still be argued that in this respect, Czech society was closely linked to “Western Europe”—differing only in the small detail that the Czech travelers behaved like British colonial masters, even though they traveled as tourists to visit the pyramids or the Taj Mahal. In this reading, the image of a Czech nation emerges as a part of Western “colonial” Europe. While the discourse on civilization suggests a close relationship to the Western European powers, the ideal of a common European identity becomes unstable precisely when the Czech travelers describe encounters with Westerners, who would generally be British or French colonial servants of some sort. Various anecdotes show the uneasiness of the Czech traveler inside the power relations of colonial societies, and this topic once again appears consistently throughout the late nineteenth century to the 1930s. In 1892, the geographer Emmanuel Fait boarded a passenger ship from Trieste to Alexandria, where he caught sight of an English passenger in the dining hall who offended both his sense of etiquette and the dress code by failing to wear a shirt. Appalled, Mr. Fait decided that only a Briton could behave that badly without any consequences, since they were considered the masters of this region. Anyone else, he argued, would have been dismissed from the dining hall immediately.59 This little scene might stand for the acknowledgement that ultimately the Czech nation did not measure up to the European powers, after all. This ambivalent position of wanting to belong to the great powers but in the end always falling back

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on the notion of a small, unknown, or powerless nation is made explicit in a quote by Jiří Baum during his trip across the African continent in 1931. He wrote, “The Czech nation cannot do otherwise but to sympathize with the natives, who were robbed by the colonial governments of their independence and right of self-determination. . . . But on the other hand, one cannot deny that anywhere in the world it is easier to travel in those countries where the higher administration is reserved for Europeans.”60 As argued thus far, the view of the oriental was often a general European one. But it was on the road, during journeys, that differences appeared. There, the self-understanding of Czechs as a small, noncolonial nation gave rise to its “noncolonial” orientalist tendencies. To pursue this argument, the discussion now concentrates on how noncolonial Czech writing on the Orient was used to create a distance from other Western colonial societies, while at the same time keeping a distance from the oriental other. The selected Czech travelogues present a two-tiered view of overseas travel destinations such as Cairo or Delhi, both as tourist hubs and as colonial centers. This was not necessarily what the travelers had expected: most Czech travelers came for tourist reasons, even though some were diplomats or researchers doing field work. None of them were involved in colonial service. They came to see the pyramids or the Taj Mahal, but once there, they stumbled on a deeply colonial society. In such a strictly regulated and closed colonial society, the Czech tourists could only hold an ambivalent position. The following examples derive from travelogues on Cairo. Czech tourists coming to Cairo did the regular tourist program: they visited the pyramids, the museums, the temples, or bazaars. But they also described another version of Cairo, which seemed equally foreign and fascinating to them: the colonial world with its grandness and luxury was impressive. Most tourists were amazed by the beauty, the splendor, the lavishness, and the modernity of the great hotels in Cairo. They described Shepheard’s Hotel with its wide halls, terraces, and restaurants as “one of the largest hotels in the world.”61 A hotel of that size and grandeur did not exist either in Prague or in Vienna, as one of the travelers noted in awe:62 They had come to Cairo for antiquity, but they also met with modernity. The regular Czech tourist had neither the means to stay at these hotels nor the social connections (or the proper attire) to be invited to one of the social events. Czech tourists moved about in a very different world: some stayed at small pensions run by the Yugoslav or Czech expatriate community, where they could speak their mother tongue,63 some went to pubs and restaurants where they were served Czech beer.64 They distanced themselves further from the colonial establishment by complaining about the tasteless British food in Delhi, Cairo,

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or Shanghai,65 about the stiff manners and the strict dress code,66 or the boring lifestyle in colonial society.67 If the Czech tourists observed with admiration the colonial grandeur of the British in Cairo, they also tried to position themselves as different from their fellow Europeans. The rhetoric is mostly the same: the problem was never of being left out, but of not wanting to belong. The Czech tourists emphasized that they wanted to stay in small hotels68 or take a second-class train ticket rather than traveling first class. Emanuel Fait highlighted the difficulty of convincing a train conductor to sell a European anything but a first-class ticket.69 In these self-descriptions, they stayed deliberately outside the colonial world and emphasized their status as tourists from a small nation—whether as citizens of the Habsburg monarchy or of the Czechoslovak Republic—as opposed to representatives of a colonial society. This “tourist gaze”70 viewed both the “exotic Orient” and the European colonial society as the immanent other.

VI. Conclusion: The Czech Third Way Even as an arguably noncolonial nation, the Czechs adopted fundamental assumptions and principles of order intrinsic to wider European orientalist discourse. However, the institutionalization of dichotomies such as “civilization” versus “barbarism,” “dominant” versus “dominated,” or “progress” versus “backwardness” was not related to colonial experiences,71 and these conceptual oppositions assumed a different meaning in the context of a “noncolonial orientalism,” revealing tensions between the Czech self-perception as part of the European and therefore colonizing world on the one hand, and as a “small,” noncolonial nation on the other. This ambivalent position was most notable on location in the Orient: when the travelers were dealing with orientals, they played the European card, which also meant playing to a certain degree the role of European masters—a task accepted gladly by some. At the same time, though, this “West European identity” was shattered when meeting with a representative of one of the “genuinely” European colonial empires, reminding the travelers of their self-understanding as a “small nation.” Tourists like František Klement, Jiří Baum, or Ludmila Matiegková, all traveling to the Orient between the 1890s and the 1930s, defined the Orient as the essential other, thereby arguing in line with a European orientalism. At the same time, however, they found themselves in opposition to Western colonial society in the major cities of the Orient. The deployment of a noncolonial orientalism offered a third way in an otherwise dichotomous world and positioned the Czech travelers in their chosen self-definition as tourists outside both the categories of colonizer and colonized.

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Notes 1

Ludmila Matiegková, V objetí sfingy [In the Embrace of the Sphinx] (Prague: Dr. Ot. Štorch-Marien, 1927).

2

As a travelogue of one of her contemporaries is called, see Alfons Václav Hromada, Kouzlo orientu: Cestopisné črty z Thracie, Malé Asie a severní Afriky [The Magic of the Orient: Travel Sketches from Thrace, Asia Minor, and Northern Africa] (Prague: I. L. Kober, 1928). 3

Journeys to some travel destinations in the Orient had already become “completely safe, indeed safer than in certain parts of Europe,” as the German travel guide Baedeker reported on Egypt as early as 1877. Karl Baedeker, Aegypten: Handbuch für Reisende, Erster Theil: Unter-Aegypten bis zum Fayum und die Sinai-Halbinsel (Leipzig: Baedeker, 1877), 21. On the beginnings of worldwide tourism since about 1890, see Lynne Withey, Grand Tours and Cook’s Tours: A History of Leisure Travel, 1750–1915 (New York: Morrow, 1997). All translations are my own, unless otherwise stated. 4

One may concede that, following the argument of Edward Said, “orientalism” was per se a “colonial orientalism,” at any rate an orientalism aimed at the exercise of colonial power. This, to say the least, was the argument of Edward Said, who focused (almost exclusively) on British, French, and US-American orientalisms, explicitly excluding, among others, German or Spanish orientalisms. Edward W. Said, Orientalism, 3rd ed. (London: Penguin, 2003), 17–22. In that case, “noncolonial orientalism” would be nothing but a contradictio in terminis. In the thirty-five years since the publication of Said’s Orientalism, though, claims have been made and cases won for various national orientalisms: German orientalism being a forerunner, research has also been done on Spanish, Russian, Polish, Japanese, or Arab orientalisms. It is the merit of these studies to redirect the focus of solely “direct colonial influences” to other forms of influences or viewpoints. This broadening of the concept of orientalism enables a closer look at national involvements without the imperial weight. As the Canadian scholar of German studies Jennifer Jenkins formulates in her introduction to German orientalism in reference to Edward Said: “this strong focus on a connection between Orientalism and a particular form of European colonialism excluded other Orientalisms from consideration.” Jennifer Jenkins, “German Orientalism: Introduction,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 24, no. 2 (2004): 98. 5

James Canton, From Cairo to Baghdad: British Travellers in Arabia (London: I. B. Tauris, 2011); Richard Allen, ed., Literature and Nation: Britain and India, 1800–1990 (London: Routledge, 2000).

6

Such as John Zarobell, Empire of Landscape: Space and Ideology in French Colonial Algeria (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010). 7

Christopher Endy, “Travel and World Power: Americans in Europe, 1890– 1917,” Diplomatic History 22, no. 4 (1998): 565–94; Jeffrey N. Dupée, British Travel Writers in China—Writing Home to a British Public, 1890–1914 (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003/4). 8

The topos of the Habsburg monarchy as a “prison of nations” became current during the second half of the nineteenth century. Adam Wandruszka,

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“‘Notwendiger Völkerverein’ oder ‘Völkerkerker’?,” in Die Habsburgermonarchie, 1848–1918, Bd. 3: Die Völker des Reiches, Teilband 1, ed. Adam Wandruszka and Peter Urbanitsch (Vienna: Verlag der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1980), xii–xviii. Jiří Kořalka, Češi v Habsburské říši a v Evropě, 1815–1914: Sociálněhistorické souvislosti vytvoření novodobého národa a národnostní otázky v českých zemích [Czechs in the Habsburg Empire and in Europe, 1815–1914: Social Historical Contexts of the Building of the Modern Nation and National Questions in the Bohemian Lands] (Prague: Argo, 1996), 122– 24. This view was partly found in Austrian discourses on the Habsburg hegemony over Bohemia and Moravia, as Robert Lemon argues based on Habsburg authors. Robert Lemon, Imperial Messages: Orientalism as Self-Critique in the Habsburg Fin de Siècle (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2011). This study also suggests that Habsburg Austrian orientalism was “self-reflective” because of missing overseas colonies. Similar mechanisms as in the Czech case may have been at work here and could be compared further. Interestingly, the Czech travelers analyzed in this chapter do not refer to or distinguish themselves from Austrian orientalism at all, at least concerning their reflections on civilization. It was Western European civilization they referred to, and Western European colonial structures they traveled in. On the road in Africa or Asia, the Habsburg Empire was only rarely referred to. 9 Miroslav Hroch, Social Preconditions of National Revival in Europe: A Comparative Analysis of the Social Composition of Patriotic Groups among the Smaller European Nations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Miroslav Hroch, V národním zájmu: Požadavky a cíle evropských národních hnutí devatenáctého století ve srovnávací perspektivě [In the National Interest: Demands and Goals of European National Movements of the Nineteenth Century in Comparative Perspective] (Prague: Ústav světových dějin, 1999). Martina Winkler also refers to the Czech topos of a “small nation” as a guiding principle when it comes to the question of how to behave during travels. Martina Winkler, “Vertraute Fremde: Tschechen und Europa,” in Okzidentbilder: Konstruktionen und Wahrnehmungen, ed. Ute Dietrich and Martina Winkler (Leipzig: Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2000), 95–97. 10

For terminology, see Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997). 11

Larry Wolff: Inventing Eastern Europe: The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994), 7; for references especially on Prague, see 106–15, 169. 12

The geographers Martin W. Lewis and Kären E. Wigen stress the unclear definition of eastern Europe as the other of Western Europe. “Inevitably, however, the two referents of ‘East’ [namely, the Orient and eastern Europe] tend to be conflated, implying that eastern Europe is somehow Asian in its essence.” Lewis and Wigen, Myth of Continents, 7. 13 And this is the reason why Edward Said dismisses the study of, for example, Russian, Habsburg, or German orientalism. It is, as he argues, of little importance to the Orient; that is not to say that he dismisses orientalism in these countries in general. Said, Orientalism, 1 and 17.

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14

Space permits me only to hint at a few studies. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Studies in Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992); Lisa Lowe, Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). On German orientalism, see Todd C. Kontje, German Orientalisms (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004); Suzanne Marchand, German Orientalism in the Age of Empire: Religion, Race, and Scholarship (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Andrea Polaschegg, Der andere Orientalismus: Regeln deutsch-morgenländischer Imagination im 19. Jahrhundert (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2005). The special role of the Habsburg monarchy as an empire without overseas colonies is dealt with by Lemon, Imperial Messages, while the following concentrates on internal colonialism of Austria-Hungary: Moritz Csáky, Johannes Feichtinger, and Ursula Prutsch, eds., Habsburg Postcolonial: Machtstrukturen und kollektives Gedächtnis (Vienna: Studien-Verlag, 2003). For Russia, see Kerstin S. Jobst, “Ambivalenzen: Anmerkungen zum orientalistischen Diskurs im Zarenreich,” in Entführung aus dem Serail: Interdisziplinäre Beiträge zum Orientalismus, ed. Detlev Quintern and Verena C. Paulus (Berlin: Weißensee-Verlag, 2008), 165–84; David Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, Russian Orientalism: Asia in the Russian Mind from Peter the Great to the Emigration (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010); Victor Taki, “Orientalism on the Margins: The Ottoman Empire under Russian Eyes,” Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History 12, no. 2 (2011): 321–51. Issues of Polish orientalism are included in Izabela Kalinowska, Between East and West: Polish and Russian Nineteenth-Century Travel to the Orient (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2004). On Japanese orientalism, see Stefan Tanaka, Japan’s Orient: Rendering Pasts into History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993). On Ottoman orientalism, see Ussama Makdisi, “Ottoman Orientalism,” American Historical Review 107, no. 1 (2002): 768–96. 15

Suzanne Marchand expresses her doubts about national orientalisms and states its pitfalls very clearly (German Orientalism, xx–xxi). 16

Well demonstrated by Canton, From Cairo to Baghdad, 2; Dupée, British Travel Writers in China, 11; and implicitly acknowledged by many others. For a similar argument for US Americans, see Endy, “Travel and World Power,” 565–94. 17

These studies refer mostly to the nineteenth century. Based on the observation of a Europe-wide similarity of the expressions, motifs, and topoi, one article even argued against the existence of a specific “Czech orientalism” and preferred the existence of a general European orientalism. Hana Navrátilová, “‘Krásný, báječný, nešťastný Egypt!’: Případ českého orientalismu” [“‘Beautiful, splendid, unfortunate Egypt!’: The Case of a Czech Orientalism”], in “Krásný, báječný, nešťastný Egypt!”: Čeští cestovatelé konce 19. a první poloviny 20. století [“Beautiful, Splendid, Unfortunate Egypt!”: Czech Travelers at the End of the Nineteenth and the First Half of the Twentieth Century], ed. Adéla Jůnová Macková, Hana Navrátilová, Hana Havlůjová, and Libor Jůn (Prague: Libri, 2009), 512–69. 18

Fernando Coronil refers to this approach as “occidentalism.” Fernando Coronil, “Beyond Occidentalism: Toward Nonimperial Geohistorical Categories,” Cultural Anthropology 11, no. 1 (1996): 51–87. See also James G. Carrier, Occidentalism: Images of the West (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995). 19

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20

On France and Great Britain, see mainly Said, Orientalism. Also see Dupée, British Travel Writers in China, 121.

21

Published by Jan Otto in twenty-eight volumes between 1888 and 1908.

22

“Orient,” Ottův slovník naučný 18 (1902): 864.

23

Named after the first president of the Czechoslovak Republic, Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk (1850–1937). 24

[K. Mtšk], “Orient,” Masarykův slovník naučný 5 (1931): 394.

25

František Václav Krejčí, Jaro v Japonsku [Spring in Japan] (Prague: Jan Štenc, 1923), 3.

26

The travelers defined the Orient from Tunis (Karel Domin, Za jižním sluncem: Zápisky přírodopisce z cesty po středomoří [To the Southern Sun: Notes of a Natural Scientist on His Travels through the Mediterranean] [Prague: J. Otto, 1925], 373), via Ceylon (Otakar Pertold, Perla indického Oceánu [The Pearl of the Indian Ocean] [Prague: J. Otto, 1933]), to China (F. N. Kolářová, Do říše zlatého draka [To the Empire of the Golden Dragon] [Jičín: Šmejc a spol., 1931], 7). 27

Italics in the original. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Studies in Travel Writing and Transculturation (New York: Routledge, 1992), 5. A similar argument in Dupée, British Travel Writers in China, 5. For a critical reflection on Pratt’s stance on travelogues, see Steve Clark, “Introduction,” in Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit, ed. Steve Clark (London: Zed Books, 1999), 1–28; here 8. 28

Michael Harbsmeier, “Reisebeschreibungen als mentalitätsgeschichtliche Quellen: Überlegungen zu einer historisch-anthropologischen Untersuchung frühneuzeitlicher Reisebeschreibungen,” in Reiseberichte als Quellen: Aufgaben und Möglichkeiten der historischen Reiseforschung, ed. Antoni Mączak (Wolfenbüttel: Herzog August Bibliothek, 1982), 2. 29

Ibid., 1–2.

Kryštof Harant z Polžic a Bezdružic, Putování aneb cesta z Království českého do Benátek a odtud do země Svaté, země judské a dále do Egypta, a potom na horu Oreb, Sinai a Sv. Kateřiny v pusté Arábii [Pilgrimage, or Journey from Bohemia to Venice, from There to the Holy Land, Judea, and to Egypt, later to Oreb, Sinai, and St. Catherine Mountain in Desert Arabia] (1608). On the cultural role of early modern Bohemian travelogues to Egypt, see Lucie Storchová, ed., Mezi houfy lotrův se pustiti: České cestopisy o Egyptě 15.–17. století [To Set Out between Hordes of Scoundrels: Bohemian Travelogues on Egypt of the Fifteenth to the Seventeenth Centuries] (Prague: Set Out, 2005). 30

31 As referred to in František Klement, Z Jaffy do Jerusalema [From Jaffa to Jerusalem] (Prague: Přítel domoviny, 1894), 11.

Hana Navrátilová, Egypt v české kultuře přelomu devatenáctého a dvacátého století [Egypt in Czech Culture at the Turn of the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Centuries] (Prague: Set Out, 2001). 32

33

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34

One of the activities of the Oriental Institute in the early 1930s was to hold— and eventually publish—a series of lectures on the economic situation in Asia. Included were lectures such as: Rudolf Cicvárek, Obchodní poměry ve východní Asii [Economic Conditions in East Asia] (Prague: Orientální ústav v Praze, 1931); or Josef Hanč, Hospodářské síly na dálném východě [Economic Forces in the Far East] (Prague: Orientální ústav v Praze, 1933). 35

Stanovy Orientálního ústavu v Praze [Statutes of the Oriental Institute in Prague], 1930, Masarykův ústav a Archiv akademie věd České republiky, v. v. i. [Masaryk Institute and Archive of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, henceforth abbreviated as MÚA AV ČR], fond: Orientální ústav [Oriental Institute], carton 2, inv. no. 8. Stanovy [Statutes], n.d., Archiv hlavního Města Prahy [Prague City Archives], Společnost pro hospodařské a kulturní styky s Černomořím a Orientem [Association for Economic and Cultural Relations with the Black Sea and Orient]. Spolkový katastr SK XXII/1582, 1928–53. Organisační statut, Ústav pro technické a hospodařské styky emigrační a kolonisační při VI. Odb. MAP [Organizational statute, Institute for Technical and Economic Relations for Emigration and Colonization at the sixth division of the Masaryk Academy of Labor], 1923, MÚA AV ČR, fond: Masarykova Akademie Práce, carton 9, inv. no. 283. 36

Alois Musil, “Das orientalistische Institut,” Prager Presse 2, no. 21 (1922): 1. See Jiří Bečka, “Alois Musil, duchovní otec Orientálního ústavu” [Alois Musil, the Intellectual Father of the Oriental Institute], in Alois Musil—Český vědec světového jména [Alois Musil—Czech Scholar of International Reputation], ed. Rudolf Veselý (Prague: Globe, 1995), 29–32 (30). 37

Alois Musil, Naše úkoly v orientalistice a v orientě [Our Tasks in Oriental Studies and in the Orient] (Prague: Edvard Leschinger, 1920), 2; reprint from Naše doba, 27, nos. 3–4 (1920), 2–20. 38

Musil, Naše úkoly v orientalistice a v orientě, 1–2.

39

Ibid., 2.

40

While the Orient played a prominent role in the growth of Czechoslovak economic exchange with the non-European world in the interwar period, it was still part of a larger increase of trade relations with Africa, Asia, and South America during this period and may be considered part of globalization processes. See Alice Teichova, “Die Tschechoslowakei, 1918–1980,” in Handbuch der europäischen Wirtschafts- und Sozialgeschichte, Bd. 6, ed. Wolfram Fischer and André Armengaud (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1987), 598–622 (617). 41

On European identity in Africa, see also Zoran Milutinović, “Oh, to Be a European!: What Rastko Petrović Learnt in Africa,” in Under Eastern Eyes: A Comparative Introduction to East European Travel Writing on Europe, ed. Wendy Bracewell and Alexis Drace-Francis (Budapest: Central European University Press, 2008), 267–91.

42

One may find, for example, the differentiation between “European civilization” and “Asian culture.” Tavík František Šimon, Listy z cesty kolem světa [Letters from a Trip around the World] (Prague: J. Otto, 1928), 188–89.

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43

Jiří Baum, Africkou divočinou: Autem z Prahy k Mysu Dobré Naděje [Through the African Wilderness: By Car from Prague to the Cape of Good Hope] (Prague: L. Souček, 1932), 32. 44 Emil Nordan, “V zemi pyramid” [In the Land of Pyramids], Světozor (1906), 585–88, 620–22 (622); Josef Jan Svátek, V zemi faraonů [In the Land of the Pharaos] (Prague: Řivnáč, 1907), 54. 45

Marie Majerová, “Tunis, bílý burnus prorokův” [Tunis, the White Burnous of the Prophet], Světozor 5 (1910), 106–8; and 6 (1910), 129–30.

46

Jan Kořínek, Maroko: Cestopis a úvahy o kulturních, politických, hospodářských a mezinárodně obchodních poměrech dnešního šerifského císařství [Morocco: Travelogue and Reflections on Cultural, Political, Economic, and International Trade Conditions of Today’s Sheriff ’s Empire] (Prague: Karel Voleský, 1928), 25. 47 Hadži Mohamed Abdallah Brikcius, V záři půlměsíce:  Moje pouť do Mekky a Mediny, Díl 1: Yemen—Země tradic [In September’s Half Moon: My Pilgrimage to Mekka and Medina, Part 1: Yemen—The Land of Tradition] (Prague: Klub přátel Orientu, 1934), 49. 48

Baum, Africkou divočinou, 32.

49

Klement, Z Jaffy do Jerusalema, 50–53.

50

Ibid., 20–21.

51

Viktor Mussik, Výlet do středověku: Reportáž z Habeše [Excursion to the Middle Ages: Report from Abyssinia] (Prague: Československá grafická Unie, 1935). 52

Baum, Africkou divočinou, 43.

53

Šimon, Listy z cesty kolem světa, 188–89.

54

Baum, Africkou divočinou, 91.

55

The role of the “noble savage” in nineteenth-century discourse is discussed by Ter Ellingson, The Myth of the Noble Savage (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), and by the German-language classic Urs Bitterli, Die “Wilden” und die “Zivilisierten”: Grundzüge einer Geistes- und Kulturgeschichte der europäischüberseeischen Begegnung (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1976). 56

See Wolff, Inventing Eastern Europe; Peter Bugge, “Longing or Belonging? Czech Perceptions of Europe in the Inter-War Years and Today,” Yearbook of European Studies 11 (1999): 111–29. 57

Hanuš Mayer, Egypt: Obrázky z cest [Egypt: Travel Pictures] (Prague: Beaufort, 1908), 72. 58

Ibid., 172.

Emanuel Fait, “Na vlnách nilských” [On the Waves of the Nile], Lumír: Časopis zábavný a poučný 20 (1892): 9–10, 17–18 (10). 59

60

Baum, Africkou divočinou, 43.

61

Svátek, V zemi faraonů, 71.

62

Vilém Němec, V zaslíbené zemi a na půdě africké [In the Promised Land and on African Soil] (Prague: A. Svěcený, 1916), 54.

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63 František V. Foit, Autem napříč Afrikou, díl 1 [Across Africa by Car, part 1] (Prague, 1932), 17; Jaroslav Doubek, Dvě cesty Spexoru do Afriky a Asie [Two Trips with a Spexor Car to Africa and Asia] (Plzeň: V. J. Krýsa, 1933), 31. 64

Foit, Autem napříč Afrikou, 46, 52, 61; Vladimír Hýl, Ze tří dílů světa: Cestopisné dojmy a povídky [From Three Continents: Travel Impressions and Stories] (Slezská Ostrava, 1932), 74. 65

Krejčí, Jaro v Japonsku, 41.

66

Foit, Autem napříč Afrikou, 43.

67

Jiří Baum complained about the boredom in the small colonial settlements in Central Africa. Baum, Africkou divočinou, 106. 68

Doubek, Dvě cesty Spexoru do Afriky a Asie, 33.

69

Fait, “Na vlnách nilských,” 9.

70

John Urry, The Tourist Gaze: Leisure and Travel in Contemporary Societies (London: Sage, 1990). 71

See Sebastian Conrad and Shalini Randeria, “Einleitung: Geteilte Geschichten—Europa in einer postkolonialen Welt,” in Jenseits des Eurozentrismus: Transnationale und postkoloniale Ansätze in den Geschichts- und Kulturwissenschaften, ed. Sebastian Conrad and Shalini Randeria (Frankfurt am Main: Campus, 2002), 9–49 (22).

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12: Oriental Sexuality and Its Uses in Nineteenth-Century Travelogues Ulrike Stamm

T

HIS CHAPTER seeks to explore some of the ways in which discourses about oriental sexuality were deployed in European travelogues. The concept of deployment, taken here to refer to the way models of the Orient and oriental culture were used in European writing, aims at a more thorough understanding of the familiar notion of the stereotypically sensual Orient with its concomitant figures of the lascivious oriental and odalisques, and its central role in constructions of the Orient. In particular, this chapter will ask which function these images had for European travelers, by giving special attention to their respective gender, class, and social position, which usually, but not always, play a decisive role in this respect. Thus this chapter will look at “how asymmetries in the production of the discourse of desire differed by gender and class, [and] at how effectively these distinctions affirmed a shared notion of European bourgeois culture and its prescriptions for white normality,”1 as Ann Laura Stoler suggested in her seminal study. This requires sensitivity to the differing functions that a common trope or metaphor take on in the writing of different travelers; even though the stereotype of the sexualized oriental is to be found in almost all texts dealing with the Orient, it can fulfill different purposes and functions and be assigned various meanings, which will be charted here. In Histoire de la sexualité Foucault proposed that occidental discourses on sexuality effectively hide or mask sexuality such that it has to be brought to light explicitly. Desire must not be understood as something natural, inborn to human nature, but as something that follows from “the power-laden discourses of sexuality where it is animated and addressed.”2 Following Foucault’s insight, this chapter will seek to identify the cultural production of the concepts of sexuality and desire as enacted in orientalist texts, here in travel writing on the Orient. The European representation of oriental sexuality should therefore not be seen simply as a process of projecting onto the Orient notions and practices that are repressed at home—rather the discourse is an opportunity to and a means of constructing sexuality in changing contexts, establishing and reinforcing

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norms of sexuality, which nonetheless diverge with respect to gender, class, and historical circumstances.

I. Prevalent Male Perspectives on Oriental Sexuality Most texts about the Orient written by male authors contribute to the conception of this region as a space where women are subservient to male sexuality, even though these authors had no access to a harem or no possibility of seeing any oriental women without their veils. Still, for most authors, the need to infuse the Orient with a dominating atmosphere of sensuality is compulsive. This is demonstrated by the travelogues of the German travel writer Duke Hermann von Pückler-Muskau (1785–1871), who traveled extensively in the Orient and even bought a female slave there named Machbuba, whom he took with him to Germany, where she soon died. In many allusions in his travel report about Egypt, “Aus Mehemed Alis Reich,” Pückler-Muskau invokes sexuality as the essence of the Orient, such that it not only influences the relationship between men and women, but even becomes a vehicle for expressing a domineering control over Egyptian art by the European spectator. In the following passage, he climbs one of the smaller pyramids, remembering a story by Herodot: “Es ist die, von welcher Herodot das bekannte Märchen der sich prostituierenden Königstochter erzählt, und sie setzt in der That ihrer Besteigung bis zum Gipfel eben so wenig Hindernisse entgegen, wie die königliche Jungfrau einst den Liebkosungen ihrer Anbeter.”3 By comparing the pyramid with a woman, the author adopts the position of effortless mastery over the country, encompassing its women, the female slave, and its culture, the pyramid. An oriental artwork is used not only as a means to talk about oriental sexuality but also as a means to demonstrate male European domination of the oriental culture, characterized as a passive female. However, male authors also used the subject of oriental sexuality as a foil against which to construct a different, normalized European sexuality. By referring to oriental sexuality, male authors in the period therefore achieved two results: on the one hand they constructed the phantom of a sexualized world that was at their service, awaiting their “mounting,” and on the other hand they could—in some cases simultaneously—distance themselves from this world by reverting to a “normal” European identity. In the case of Pückler-Muskau, this had an aristocratic basis: after bringing the slave girl onto his ship he calls himself a “chevalier” or “knight”; he will not force himself on her, but rather leaves her alone for some days. He thereby defines himself through his aristocratic position and demonstrates that—despite his fascination with her body, which he describes in

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detail—he can detach himself from her easily and does not fall prey to her beauty or her oriental sexuality and his own desire. By writing about the Orient, Pückler-Muskau therefore creates the impression of a space that he can conquer sexually yet leave again without being infected by obsessive desire or moved by this encounter. Pückler-Muskau’s mindset, which forbids a loss of control over himself and the female other, is certainly typical of the colonial writing of the nineteenth century.

II. The Dissociation of Sexuality and Desire: Male Authors in the Margin Male-authored discourses on oriental sexuality in the period are, however, much more complicated. Two French travelogues can serve to demonstrate these complexities and ambiguities. One text is by Gustave Flaubert (1821–80). While traveling through Egypt he visits the courtesan Kuchuk Hanem, who dances in front of him and with whom he spends a night.4 He describes this event in a rather neutral way in his writing. However, after leaving Kuchuk Hanem following their second meeting, he confesses his longing for her. In his extensive discussion of Flaubert’s relationship to Kuchuk Hanem and her meaning for Flaubert, Edward Said interprets this meeting perhaps too unilaterally;5 he also does not quote the private letters that Flaubert wrote to his friend Louis Bouilhet, in which he comments much more openly on the night he spent with Kuchuck Hanem: I sucked her furiously, her body was covered with sweat, she was tired after dancing, she was cold. I covered her with my fur pelisse, and she fell asleep. . . . As for me, I scarcely shut my eyes. My night was one long, infinitely intense reverie. That was why I stayed. Watching that beautiful creature asleep (she snored, her head against my arm . . .), I thought of my nights in Paris brothels . . . and I thought of her, of her dance, of her voice as she sang songs that were for me without meaning and even without distinguishable words.6

Flaubert appears here on the one hand as a person who assumes control over the dancing woman—a control that is also visual. In exerting this control he takes possession of her and, in so doing, also of the Orient. But besides the sexual conquest of the oriental woman, other points seem to be of equal importance, especially the fact that the author appears to be dependent on her. Furthermore, he notices and confesses the fundamental distance that separates him from the woman in his arms; although she lies physically close, her dancing, her language, and culture remain alien to him. Therefore, his gaze “reveals at once a will to possess the dancer, a cathexis in the dance as an ecstatic ritual, and an aporia or gap in his understanding.”7 By confessing this gap and by realizing that his longing

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connected to Kuchuk Hanem cannot be fulfilled—a fact that is also demonstrated through the paratactic style of his text—he constructs sensualized models of the Orient to articulate the notion of an insatiable desire. He writes, therefore, not so much about sexuality as about desire, and is, as Stavros Stavrou Karayanni says, left “suspended between his physical desire, which seeks to inscribe itself on the body, and his mental [unfulfilled] desire to occupy the space that she defines for herself.”8 Yet Flaubert’s text is especially important insofar as the French writer realizes that his (in this case mental) desire to invade the Orient cannot be fulfilled. In addition to the writer’s impulse to conquer the oriental woman there is a notion of psychological and cultural distance between her and him, between Orient and Occident, which remains tantamount for him. In his text the Orient retains something of an unconquerable quality, and the oriental woman, therefore, also represents the Orient’s resistance to domination. All this makes Flaubert’s text markedly different from most orientalist writings of the period. Forty years later, Flaubert’s pupil, Guy de Maupassant (1850–93), also travels to the Orient. In his text, the production of desire plays a key role as well but is not connected to the recollection of a sexual encounter, resting rather on an unfulfilled anticipation: In a narrow street I stopped in front of a beautiful Oriental house whose open door revealed a large staircase, completely decorated with tiles and lit from top to bottom by an invisible light, a dying fire, a cloud of brightness which came down from some unknown source. Under this indescribable light each of the glazed steps was waiting for someone, maybe a portly old Muslim, but I think that they were calling out for a lover’s footstep. Never in my life have I predicted, seen, understood or experienced such a feeling of anticipation as I did in front of this open door and this empty staircase watched over by an unseen light.9

Maupassant’s fascinating description constructs the staircase and its mysterious light as a space of anticipation; it seems to be precisely the emptiness and openness of the scene described that conjures the fantasy of an indescribable form of sexuality bound up with the allusion to an “unseen light.” But his next sentences make clear that this huge anticipation is intrinsically tied to the idea of the Orient as an ultimately deceptive space: Is she there inside, the one who lies awake, listening and hating us, the Arab Juliet whose heart is beating wildly? Perhaps, but her desire is only sensual, there is no soaring up to the stars as we would experience on a night such as this. In this warm and pliable land, so captivating that the legend of the Lotophages was born on the island of Djerba, the air is sweeter-smelling than anywhere else, the sun is warmer, the

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day is brighter—but the heart does not know how to love. These women are beautiful and ardent, but they know nothing of love as we know it. Their simple souls have never experienced romantic emotions and their kisses, it is said, are not the stuff of dreams.10

It seems that Maupassant can only evoke so much expectation because, as he understands it, the fulfillment of such expectations remained impossible. The anticipation of sexual pleasure and its disappointment therefore appear as two sides of the same coin—the evocation of a form of excess is only possible because of the knowledge that it does not exist as a meaningful experience in the Orient. The author’s ambivalence is illustrated by the image of the staircase, which appears as a path inviting the author but remaining untrodden. He conjures up this image of the stairs as a threshold that might be transgressed in order to remain outside; ultimately the stairs lead nowhere, which might be understood as a strategy for preserving at least the fantasy of excess. The discourse on oriental sexuality here serves as a means to separate romantic love from a simply sensual love, thereby establishing the European ideal of a higher Platonic love. It is, as Foucault writes, a sustaining discourse, which is meant to express occidental truth and subjectivity, and, as such, aims at reinforcing the bourgeois value system. But it seems the author needs to imagine this “wild” oriental sexuality not only as negative counterpart, but maybe also as a source of sensuality that rejuvenates—by some secret connection—the “higher” European form of love.

III. Female Perspectives on Oriental Sexuality Female authors in the period tend to use models of oriental sexuality quite different from those of their male counterparts. First, they have a broader range of possibilities as to whom they can describe as sensually attractive: they have the chance to meet both men and women. Additionally, in many texts by female authors there are allusions to the beauty of oriental men, which arguably amount to a positive evocation of sensuality. In this context the opera sometimes becomes a kind of foil not only for perceiving the Orient but also for confessing this fascination through the evocation of male beauty. This is most prominent in the travel reports by the German author Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn (1805–80), who was a very popular writer and also a leading feminist of her time. She writes about the captain of her ship on the Nile: Der Reis, ein auffallend schöner Mann, der einen mächtigstolzen Turban und einen eleganten dunkelblauen Wollmantel trägt, steht gewöhnlich bei mühseligen Manövern in der Mitte des Schiffes,

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singt, und wendet sich dabei mit emporgehobenen Armen von einer Seite zur andern—wobei ich immer an die Oberpriester in unsern Opern denken muß, nur daß sie nicht seine natürliche Würde haben.11

Through the allusion to an opera this fascination with male beauty is transferred to the context of art and thereby legitimized—a strategy Ida Hahn-Hahn uses several times in order to express her fascination with male oriental beauty. However, female authors can also broach the subject of female sexuality, although their writing on the subject differs crucially from that of male writers: not because of any innately female perspective, but more because of their socially and culturally constructed positions as women.12 One group of women writers presents the sexuality of oriental women and the corresponding spaces, that is, the harem and the Turkish baths, as something to be negated or even abhorred. A prime example of this is found in the travel report by the Austrian travel writer Ida Pfeiffer (1797–1858), who is certainly the most audacious woman traveler of the German-speaking countries, and who also published many books about her voyages. On her second trip around the world she visits a harem in Baghdad: her written account of the episode demonstrates her disgust at the alleged sexual practices taking place. After describing a “delicious” meal, where the women grab at the food in an unrestrained manner, and the astonishingly equal and informal relationship between mistresses and maids, she ventures a brief insight into adjacent rooms of the harem: “In wenig Augenblicken hatte ich genug gesehen, um mit Abscheu und Mitleid gegen diese armen Geschöpfe erfüllt zu sein, die durch Müßiggang, durch Mangel an Kenntnissen und Moral so tief sinken, daß sie den Namen der Menschlichkeit entweihen.”13 She does not describe what she has actually seen, but it seems as if she had watched scenes of sexual debauchery, causing her to feel disgust and pity, which elicited from her a carefully registered yet highly ambivalent response. The fact that in this, her second, report about a visit to a harem Pfeiffer represents this space in a much more negative way than in her first account can be taken as evidence that bourgeois sexual mores become increasingly prevalent in her thinking; now the harem is associated with a brothel and its female inhabitants can only be characterized as sexualized women who threaten “the existence of monogamous marriage and bourgeois domesticity.”14 With these judgments, Ida Pfeiffer participates in the growing enforcement of bourgeois morality, which she uses more and more obsessively as a scale against which to gauge foreign cultures. In contrast to Ida Pfeiffer, the novels and travelogues of Countess Ida Hahn-Hahn advocate aristocratic values that often transgress bourgeois norms—not least in their condemnation of the institution of

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marriage. Nevertheless Hahn-Hahn also devalues oriental sexuality, indeed she seems to deprecate everything physical, and in this respect distinguishes herself only very little from Ida Pfeiffer. A telling example is found in a passage in which she describes meeting a pregnant woman in a street in Damascus: Als sie mir entgegenschritt, majestätisch klappernd mit ihren Kabkabs, höher als alle Männer, in den hellsten Farben gekleidet, die Unform der Gestalt weiß der Himmel wie ungeschickt durch einen gelben Shawl recht zur Schau gestellt: ich sage Dir, es war als ob eine Schachkönigin über das ganze Schachbrett mir entgegenrutschte, und ich dachte, ob ich nicht gut thun würde wie ein Laufer [sic!] Reißaus zu nehmen, denn der Anblick war einigermaßen fürchterlich.15

Obviously, the pregnant oriental woman represents both sexual activity and biological reproduction, which seems to be the main reason why Hahn-Hahn gives such a pejorative description of this encounter. Despite its negative attitude in this instance the text has a remarkable subtext insofar as the pregnant woman is shown as powerful and, through the comparison with a chess queen, is given an almost majestic appearance. This comparison imbues the encounter with a surreal aspect that is heightened through the fact that the ground itself seems to be a tilting chessboard, as in a theater where an even plane may suddenly turn into an inclined platform, placing the observer in an endangered position. Faced with this impressive female body, the author turns into a masculine figure, a bishop, who tries to escape from this figure that symbolizes the productivity of female sexuality.

IV. An Exceptional Harem Report: Marie Espérance von Schwartz A very different way of representing oriental sexuality is found in the travel report by Marie Espérance von Schwartz (1818–99), an aristocratic travel writer and author of novels, famous for her salon in Rome as well as for her friendships with Liszt and Garibaldi. For her, the visit to the harem was the fulfillment of all her dreams about the Orient, fuelled by the stories of 1001 Nights, and in her text she uses this hyperbolic space in order to position herself at the center of the harem. Right from the beginning of her account she presents the harem as a deeply sensual place, though not because of its female inhabitants and their beauty, but rather because of the many sensual experiences to be had there; as these visual impressions cannot be captured by the eye, after some time only a murmur of many voices remains: “Man hörte nur ein

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Rauschen von Seidenzeugen, ein Murmeln und Lispeln, welches sicher sagen wollte. ‘Wer kommt da, einen Blick in unsern goldenen Käfig zu thun?’”16 Through the acoustic sensation of overlapping voices und sounds, the Orient—encapsulated in the harem—gains not only a sensual aesthetic quality but also serves as a space in which East-West divisions may be transgressed. Within the description of this space, the visual—and the control and distance it brings vis-à-vis other forms of perception— ceases to be relevant. As the author’s gaze shifts, moving from objects to animals to the human residents of these rooms, blurring their distinct identities, the auditory sense predominates. However, the women of the harem are not important for evoking this sensual atmosphere; rather it is the master of the harem who plays the main role. He is described as “ein schöner Mann im kräftigsten Lebensalter; offener Ausdruck und durchaus edle Züge versprechen beim ersten Blicke alles Gute, was von ihm allgemein bekannt ist.”17 He guides the author—there is no longer any talk of the other European women who visited the harem with her—along with his wives through the glamorous rooms of the harem, one of which the author determines to be the center of oriental luxury: “Elysium dieses Tempels der raffinirtesten Pracht—den Brennspiegel, wo die Luxusstrahlen aus allen Welttheilen sich vereinigen.”18 She presents herself here as the one who has gained access to the innermost circle of this foreign world, and therefore reaches the zenith of its highest beauty and sensuality and assimilates herself totally to this place. Through the literary strategy of allusions, moving transitions, and tactile associations, the author conjures up a space of sensuality in which objects and animals seem to be connected as part of a living chain of splendor: Ein höchst geschmackvolles, weiß marmornes Bassin bot in der Mittte dieses Eldorado’s einer Schaar von lustig hin- und herschießenden Gold- und Silberfischen den ungestörtesten Aufenthaltsort, während in den graziösesten Formen hervorsprudelnde Wasserstrahlen den an der Fontaine heraufrankenden, buntblühenden Schlingpflanzen ihren schönen Frühlingsschmuck stets in gleicher Frische erhielten. Tropische Luftpflanzen und vergoldete Käfige, deren buntgefiederte Einwohner durch ein fröhliches Gezischel und Gezwitscher dem verstummenden Beschauer den Trost verliehen, daß wenigstens einigen unter den hier sich befindenden vielen gefangenen Thieren und Menschen diese Herrlichkeiten die verlorene—eigentlich nie gekannte, vielleicht aber tiefgeahnte—Freiheit ersetzen, hingen in geschmackvoller Abwechselung um dieses Bassin.19

Here, the world of the harem is described through an infinitely flexible system of associations and aesthetic sensations. In the process connections are drawn between the fish, the water spouts, the vines and air plants, and

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from there to the birds and further inhabitants of these rooms. This strategy of linguistic “liquification” breaks down the boundaries between living organic nature and the inorganic, producing an atmosphere in which the erotic attachment of human beings can be overwritten or obscured; instead, a rather “abstract” sensual atmosphere takes its place.20 Whereas von Schwartz’s account of the harem can thus far be classified as a sophisticated evocation of the Orient, one that bypasses the clichéd topos of the sensual oriental, after this climax her descriptions change. Although the idea of disclosing an authentic Orient was of key importance in most forms of European orientalist writing, the harem suddenly turns into a totally hybrid space in which many European artifacts are found between the Arab treasures: Melodieen [sic] aus den neuesten Opern ertönten in größter Präcision aus schönen Pariser und Genfer Spieluhren; die feinsten Wohlgerüche Arabiens benahmen einem noch das letzte Bewußtsein; mir war zu Muthe, als müsse ich mit geschlossenen Augen darniedersinken und diesen Feentraum über mich walten lassen, oder mir Zeit nehmen zu mir zu kommen, um dann forschen zu können, ob hier in der That Wirklichkeit sei.21

The author experiences a loss of control over her own impressions that makes her unable and unwilling to draw clear distinctions between reality and dream or imagination.22 Through the use of the subjunctive, she describes herself as being on the brink of succumbing, yet plays with the image of a collapsing, numbed woman. While she daringly presents herself to the contemporary readership as yielding to this atmosphere of sensuousness, she simultaneously appears neither as an object of masculine desires nor does she evoke a homoerotic subtext; the entire occurrence, through which she characterizes the harem as a place of desire, has an anonymous quality—only in this way is this description of sensuousness possible for a female author of her time. The following part of Schwartz’s harem account corresponds with Mary Roberts’s analysis, which she gives in connection with English representations of the harem: “Evidently the experience of being in this exotic place liberated feminine desire, allowing the English woman to imagine herself as participant and witness to forbidden adventures.”23 Von Schwartz’s libidinal occupation differs from Roberts’s description, however, as it is not associated with the women but with the room in general, whereas the harem residents themselves are registered rather as “nuisances.” The author can only stage herself as the center of the sensuality of the harem by excluding the original inmates, the oriental women. However, perhaps in order to appease her readers after this rather daring description of herself, von Schwartz then downplays the sensual tendency by describing the harem as a European salon, in which she

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even plays a few Spanish songs on an out-of-tune piano, interrupted suddenly by the head of the house, who—while patting her on the shoulder—offers her a bouquet (“als galanter Wirth . . . einen Blumenstrauß anbot”).24 Receiving the flowers she once again occupies the center of attention. Even though the Bey’s25 conduct conforms to the behavior of the polite European, the already libidinous atmosphere is prolonged but, according to the occidental pattern, also turned into a sublime version of desire. Thus the author presents herself first in a magnificent oriental harem as the center of a sensual scene and then moves on to other rooms, which resemble the European salon, where she again evokes an erotically charged scene in which she once more plays a central role—both with the exclusion of the actual oriental women. At the end of her visit she casts a look into the bedroom of the Bey and his Lillah: Das Schlafzimmer des Beys und seiner Lillah ist unbedingt eins der reichsten Gemächer des Harems. Das Bett, worauf ich nicht weniger als sechszehn Kissen, von allen erdenklichen Größen und mit den mannigfaltigsten Stoffen überzogen, zählte, ist nichts Anderes, als ein sehr breiter Divan. Die Dunkelheit dieses überladenen Gemaches, welches nur durch eine Oeffnung, vor welcher sich anstatt einer Thür ein dicker damastener Vorhang befindet, erleuchtet wird, war mir wirklich drückend. Bei einer mysteriösen Abendbeleuchtung mag dieses Boudoir wohl seine Reize haben, aber die Dunkelheit ist, däucht mir, ein zu treues Bild der Gefangenschaft, als daß ich mich selbst in dem nach Moschus und Ambra duftenden Sancto sanctorum der Lillah zufrieden geben würde.26

Sensuality and imprisonment now merge in the semantic field of the boudoir imagined as a dark and mysterious place, while in accordance with the aristocratic value system of the author, the topic of sexuality is openly addressed. The author puts herself imaginatively into this space, only to abolish such a transgression by reviving the topic of imprisonment. Yet she willingly concedes the possibility of a different reception of this venue in a different light (“einer mysteriösen Abendbeleuchtung”), and attributes to it a beguiling atmosphere. Throughout her description of the harem Marie Espérance von Schwartz has presented herself as participant in a sexualized oriental space. She used different aspects of oriental sexuality in order to position herself in an atmosphere of heightened sensuousness and has thereby transgressed many of the norms of nineteenth-century femininity. That this transgression is possible for her is certainly a result of her aristocratic upbringing, which precluded the norms of middle-class feminine morality. But—like Pückler-Muskau and Maupassant in their different ways—she ultimately distances herself from this sensual atmosphere by comparing

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the harem to a prison, which she finally leaves in order to return to her “normal” European identity.

V. Conclusion The discourse on oriental sexuality plays an important role in the representation of the Orient, functioning in a variety of different ways in the selection of Francophone and Germanophone texts discussed. However, oriental sexuality also functions as a kind of transnational discourse, as its divergent functions are aligned less to either national or gendered distinctions than to the social class and respective attitude of the individual authors toward moral norms and the subject of sexuality generally. While Pückler-Muskau’s allusions to sexuality have the function of demonstrating his mastery over the foreign culture, Flaubert and Maupassant do not use sexuality as a strategy to establish authority over the Orient. Perhaps their rather exceptional discourse has to do with the fact that they were both outsiders in French middle-class society and therefore did not have to propagate bourgeois morality.27 Furthermore, in both cases their discursive engagement with the sensuous Orient rests on the dissociation of sexuality and desire. Flaubert, despite his sexual contact with Kuchuk-Hanem, keeps up longing for and desiring the oriental woman while remaining aware of the distance between himself and the foreign culture. For Maupassant, the interplay between overwhelming expectation and radical disappointment is used in order to legitimize the European romantic conception of love. One further result of this rather cursory comparison is that the difference between male and female perspectives does not lead to a clearcut division; even though the majority of female authors are more careful with their allusions to sexuality, the—more or less expeditious—deprecation of oriental sexuality is to be found in texts by male and female authors alike, namely, in texts by Maupassant as well as by Ida Pfeiffer, Ida Hahn-Hahn, and Marie Espérance von Schwartz. They all evoke an ineffable oriental sexuality as a foil against which they construct either a higher (Maupassant) or a normative (Pfeiffer) European sexuality. In the context of the female texts Marie Espérance von Schwartz’s use of discourses on oriental sexuality is a definite exception and demonstrates that female authors, at least aristocratic ones, could evoke sensuousness and talk about sexuality, albeit in a slightly subdued form. Her daring self-presentation at the center of the harem is an extraordinary appropriation of this imaginary space, in which she succeeds in redefining the stereotypical inventory of orientalism. Yet this evocation of the harem remains a transitory experience for her and one from which she can as easily return to her European identity—as did Pückler-Muskau.

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But the main difference between the male and the female author is that Pückler-Muskau actually appropriates the harem by buying a female slave for himself, whereas von Schwartz can only take possession of the Orient in an imaginative way by means of her text. In the end, Flaubert seems to be the one author who is most affected by his longing for the oriental woman—and for the Orient as a “territory of difference” and as representing the ideal of an “undomesticated life.”28 In his text the otherness of the Orient is therefore not obliterated and accommodated, but— through his aesthetics of distance—more respected than in other texts of the time. Despite this he too remains ambivalent toward this enigmatic space, as is shown by the fact that his desire blurs in an astonishing way with his longing for his friend Louis Bouilet, to whom he writes at the end of his travels: “Why have I a melancholy desire to return to Egypt, to go back up the Nile and see Kuchuk Hanem? All the same, it was a rare night I spent there, and I tasted it to the full. How I missed you!”29

Notes 1

Ann Laura Stoler, Race and the Education of Desire: Foucault’s History of Sexuality and the Colonial Order of Things (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995), 177. 2

Ibid., 165. In this context Ann Laura Stoler also criticizes the fact that colonial studies have looked more to the “regulation and release of desire than to its manufacture” (167). 3

See Hermann Fürst von Pückler-Muskau, Aus Mehemed Alis Reich: Ägypten und der Sudan um 1840 (Stuttgart: Hallbergsche Verlagshandlung, 1844), 2:18.

4

Stavros Stavrou Karayanni is most concerned with Flaubert’s description of Kuchuk’s dance, and concludes at one point rather one-sidedly that “the Western subject attempts to either ‘appease’ the intransigent dancing body of the ‘Orient’ by explicating it in terms of familiar markers of reference, such as Classical tradition and the Bible, or subdue it by conquering it sexually.” Karayanni, “Dismissal Veiling Desire: Kuchuk Hanem and Imperial Masculinity,” in Belly Dance: Orientalism, Transnationalism, and Harem Fantasy, ed. Anthony Shay and Barbara Sellers-Young (Costa Mesa, CA: Mazda, 2005), 115–16. 5

Said interpreted this relationship as paradigmatic for orientalism, “for the pattern of relative strength between East and West, and the discourse about the Orient that it enabled.” Said, Orientalism, 3rd ed. (London: Penguin, 2003), 6. 6

Gustave Flaubert, The Letters of Gustave Flaubert: 1830–1857, trans. and ed. Francis Steegmuller (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press 1980), 117. 7

Karayanni, “Dismissal Veiling Desire,” 139.

8

Ibid., 132.

9

Guy de Maupassant, La vie errante (1890), quoted in Judy Mabro, Veiled HalfTruths: Western Travellers’ Perceptions of Middle Eastern Women (London: Tauris, 1996), 101.

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10

Ibid.

11

Ida Gräfin Hahn-Hahn, Orientalische Briefe (Berlin: Duncker, 1844), 3:121.

12

For a wider discussion of this subject, see Ulrike Stamm, Der Orient der Frauen: Deutschsprachige Reiseberichte von Autorinnen des frühen 19. Jahrhunderts (Cologne: Böhlau, 2010).

13

Ida Pfeiffer, Eine Frauenfahrt um die Welt: Reise von Wien nach Brasilien, Chili, Otaheiti, China, Ost-Indien, Persien und Kleinasien (Vienna: Verlag Carl Gerold, 1850), 3:238. 14

Antje Harnisch, “Der Harem in Familienblättern des 19. Jahrhunderts: Koloniale Phantasien und Nationale Identität,” German Life and Letters 51, no. 3 (1998): 325–41, here 335. Harnisch also points out that in the texts she has examined, “sexual morality has certainly enforced itself to such an extent” it seems, “that the Orient itself is largely desexualized” (335). With Ida Pfeiffer, however, this is not yet the case. 15

Hahn-Hahn, Orientalische Briefe, 2:51.

16

Marie Espérance von Schwartz, Blätter aus dem africanischen Reisetagebuche einer Dame (Braunschweig: Verlag Friedrich Vieweg und Sohn, 1849), 2:183. 17

Ibid., 195.

18

Ibid., 196.

19

Ibid., 196–97.

20

Cf. Mary Roberts, Intimate Outsiders: The Harem in Ottoman and Orientalist Art and Travel Literature (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2007), 62: “It is precisely such sensory experiences that were the catalyst for feminine fantasy in the travelogues.” 21

Von Schwartz, Blätter aus dem africanischen Reisetagebuche, 2:197.

22

According to Edward Said, realism is the dominant mode of representation within the orientalist discourse because it claims to capture the “reality” of other countries (Orientalism, 72). Emily Apter coins, in this context, the term “colonial realism” in her article “Ethnographic Travesties: Colonial Realism, French Feminism, and the Case of Elissa Rhais,” in After Colonialism: Imperial Histories and Postcolonial Displacements, ed. Gyan Prakash (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 299–325. M. E. von Schwartz’s harem report shows, however, that realism is not necessarily part of orientalist depictions. 23

Mary Roberts, “Contested Terrains: Women Orientalists and the Colonial Harem,” in Orientalism’s Interlocuters: Painting, Architecture, Photography, ed. Jill Beaulieu and Mary Roberts (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002), 185. Mary Roberts also points out that travel writers, by portraying the harem as a foil to Arabian Nights, opened up a space in which a sexualized feminine gaze on female beauty was possible. This is true for some texts but not for Marie Espérance von Schwartz. 24

Von Schwartz, Blätter aus dem africanischen Reisetagebuche, 199.

25

“Beys” were a lesser form of rulers in the Ottoman Empire.

26

Von Schwartz, Blätter aus dem africanischen Reisetagebuche, 200.

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27

Compare André Stoll, “Die Entführung des Eremiten in die Wüste,” in Gustave Flaubert, Reise in den Orient, trans. Reinhold Werner and André Stoll (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 1996), 363–417. 28

Stoll, “Entführung des Eremiten,” 374.

29

Flaubert, Letters of Gustave Flaubert, 131.

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Contributors MICHAEL DUSCHE is currently a senior visiting fellow at the Centre for the Study of Developing Studies in Delhi, where he is working on emergent forms of universalist thinking and culture in the post-colonial context. After completing his PhD at the University of Frankfurt with a dissertation on John Rawls and global justice, he taught at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi as an assistant professor and DAAD lecturer, and was a researcher with the Chair of Islamic Studies at the University of Erfurt. He was also a fellow at the Jawaharlal Nehru Institute of Advanced Study, where he completed his second monograph, Identity Politics in India and Europe (2010). JOHANNES FEICHTINGER is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Culture Studies and Theatre History of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW), and teaches history at the University of Vienna. He specializes in intellectual history and in the study of culture. His publications include Wissenschaft zwischen den Kulturen: Österreichische Hochschullehrer in der Emigration 1933–1945 (2001) and Wissenschaft als reflexives Projekt: Von Bolzano über Freud zu Kelsen: Österreichische Wissenschaftsgeschichte 1848–1938 (2010). He is a co-founder of the Occident-Orient Research Network. JOHANN HEISS is currently a researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology at the OeAW, Vienna. He conducted fieldwork in SaudiArabia, co-authoring Tribale Gesellschaften der südwestlichen Regionen des Königreiches Saudi Arabien (2006), and in Yemen and Indonesia. Until recently he was leader of a research project concerned with the cultural memory of Turkish culture in Austria and Central Europe, and he is the co-editor of Geschichtspolitik und “Türkenbelagerung” (2013) and Der erinnerte Feind (2013). He is a co-founder of the Occident-Orient Research Network. JAMES HODKINSON is currently an associate professor in German Studies at Warwick University, UK, having previously taught at Cardiff and Oxford Brookes Universities. He is the co-editor of Encounters with Islam in German Literature and Culture (Camden House, 2009) and author of Women and Writing in the Works of Novalis: Transformation

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beyond Measure (Camden House, 2007) as well as numerous essays and articles on the topics of German Romanticism and germanophone cultures of orientalism. He is a co-founder of the Occident-Orient Research Network. KERSTIN S. JOBST is a professor of societies and cultures of memory in the Faculty of History and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, Austria. She completed her PhD, which later appeared as Zwischen Internationalismus und Nationalismus: Die polnische und die ukrainische Sozialdemokratie in Galizien von 1890 bis 1914. Ein Beitrag zur Nationalitätenfrage im Habsburgerreich (1996) and also Die Perle des Imperiums: Der russische Krim-Diskurs im Zarenreich (2007), at the University of Hamburg, where she also taught for a time. She has published numerous essays and chapters on aspects of Polish, Ukrainian, and Russian culture and history, including the well-received Geschichte der Ukraine (2010). JON KEUNE is currently the Sushila and Durga Agrawal Postdoctoral Fellow in India Studies at the University of Houston. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Modern India Studies at the University of Göttingen, having earned a PhD from Columbia University. His publications include articles on pilgrimage in western India in Contemporary Hinduism (2013), the conditions for historicizing a Hindu tradition in Religion and Historiography (forthcoming 2014), and aspects of devotional Hinduism in western India in the Brill Encyclopedia of Hinduism (2011, 2012). He is currently working on a book about caste, equality, and historiography in devotional Hinduism. TODD KONTJE is a professor of German and comparative literature at the University of California, San Diego. He is the author of Private Lives in the Public Sphere (1992), The German Bildungsroman (1993), Women, the Novel, and the German Nation (1998), German Orientalisms (2004), and Thomas Mann’s World (2011). His current project focuses on the intersection of regionalism and cosmopolitanism in German literature. MARGIT KÖVES is currently teaching Hungarian in the Department of Slavonic and Finno-Ugrian Studies at Delhi University. She was a fellow of the Indian Council of Historical Research, Indian Council of Philosophical Research, and the Indian Council of Social Science Research, where she researched nation building and identity in the context of Hungary and India, and Hungarian responses to India in literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. She has published articles and edited books in these areas, including collections of Hungarian prose in Hindi, such as Das aadhunik hungari kavi (2008) and Gezababua by János Háy (2008),

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translated jointly with Girdhar Rathi. In 2009 she published Buddhism among the Turks of Central Asia. She is coeditor of Contributions on Lukács (1989) and Resistible Rise, A Fascism Reader (2005). SARAH LEMMEN is currently a research associate at the Institute for East European History at the University of Vienna. With an academic background in history and Czech studies at the universities of Leipzig, Prague, and Vienna, she has worked at the Geisteswissenschaftliches Zentrum der Universität Leipzig and at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for European History and Public Spheres in Vienna, among other institutions. Her research interests include the history of travel and tourism, transnational history, and nation-building in East Central Europe. She is the co-editor of Orientalismen in Ostmitteleuropa (forthcoming, 2014), and has published various articles on topics related to Czech encounters with the non-European world. SHASWATI MAZUMDAR is a professor of German in the Department of Germanic and Romance Studies at Delhi University. She has published widely on diverse themes within the field of Germanic Studies, with noteworthy contributions on Lion Feuchtwanger, Habermas, and on themes and functions of India within German literature in the colonial and postcolonial contexts, especially the revolt of 1857. She is the author of Feuchtwanger/Brecht: Der Umgang mit der indischen Kolonialgeschichte; Eine Studie zur Konstruktion des Anderen (1998) and editor of Insurgent Sepoys: Europe views the Revolt of 1857 (2011). She is a co-founder of the Occident-Orient Research Network. JYOTI SABHARWAL is currently an assistant professor of German at Delhi University, having also taught briefly at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. She completed her PhD on Willy Haas and continues to specialize in German exile literature, as well as German drama of the nineteenth century and the German novel of the twentieth century. She has published in all of these areas, and the monograph Willy Haas: Die Begegnung mit Indien als Exilort is due to appear in late 2013/early 2014. ULRIKE STAMM is Privatdozentin in the Institut für Deutsche Literatur at the Humboldt University in Berlin. She completed her PhD on Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Walter Pater at the Free University in Berlin. She has worked on a number of government-funded research projects on nature and subjectivity and women’s writing, has taught in Sarajevo, Potsdam, and Berlin, and has published widely in the areas of travel writing, postcolonial theory, and feminist approaches to gender. She is the author of Der Orient der Frauen: Deutschsprachige Reiseberichte aus dem frühen 19. Jahrhundert (2010).

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JOHN WALKER is a senior lecturer in German at Birkbeck College, London, where he served as head of the School of Languages, Linguistics and Culture from 2006–9. In spring 2010 he was a visiting professor at the University of Indiana at Bloomington. He has published The Truth of Realism: A Reassessment of the German Novel 1830–1900 (2011) and edited the collection of essays The Present Word. Culture, Society and the Site of Literature and the volume on Social, Historical and Political Thought in the four-volume Impact of Idealism series (Cambridge), both due to appear in autumn 2013. He is currently working on a book on the German Enlightenment and intercultural communication.

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Index Adorno, Theodor, 21 Adorno, Theodor, works by: Dialektik der Aufklärung, 21 Ady, Endre, 175–78, 180–82, 188, 189 Afghanistan, 196 Africa, 2, 10, 42, 51, 53, 57, 58, 60, 63, 65, 72, 84, 88, 119, 131, 132; North Africa, 7, 78, 95, 135, 126, 196; travel writing on, 209–42. See also Maghreb Akin, Fatih, 8, 55, 58–60, 66, 71–73, 77 Akin, Fatih, films by: Auf der anderen Seite, 59; Crossing the Bridge, 71, 74; Gegen die Wand, 58–59, 71–72; Im Juli, 59; Soul Kitchen, 59 Alaska, 194 Aleksov, Bojan, 155, 164 Alexander III of Russia, 196 Algeria, 9, 78–98, 210, 221 Algiers: colonial rule of, 78–98; conquest of, 82–83, 87–90 alterity (incl. Alterität), 14, 81. See also other; otherness Anderson, Benedict, 9, 36, 99, 112, 113, 116, 184, 186, 189 Anderson, Mark, 60, 74 anticolonial(-ism), 3, 9, 93, 95, 107, 196 antifascist, 138, 141 antimodern, 35, 64 Appadurai, Arjun, 58, 60, 73, 74 Arany, János, 172, 187; and the epic tradition, 172 Arany, János, works by: The Death of Buda, 172, 183, 186

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Armenia(-ns), 193 aristocracy, 69, 166, 229, 234, 238; Aristocratic value systems, 35, 44, 123, 233, 237 aryan(-s), 27, 49, 50, 117, 130; The Aryan Path, the (Indian journal), 138, 142, 145; language, history, and culture, 52, 54, 130, 141 Asia, geographical and cultural models of (incl. Asien), 10, 36, 42, 43, 48, 72, 100, 118, 120, 121, 126, 128, 129, 130, 135–37, 141, 153–54, 168, 186, 190; Central, 46, 51, 168, 171, 197, 206; as cradle of civilization, 169; peoples, languages, and cultures of (incl. Asiaten), 8, 20, 23, 53, 109, 140, 190, 196, 201, 202; Russian colonies, interests, and mission in, 190–208 Asian (incl. asiatic and asiatisch), 154; cholera, 65–66; mode of production, Marxist concept of, 43, 52; physical features, 65 Asiatick Society of Bengal (calcutische Gesellschaft), 40, 43, 52 Austria(-n) (incl. Kingdom of Austria and Austrian Empire before 1867), 9, 12, 13, 44, 47, 61, 78, 79, 100, 104, 106, 169, 172, 191, 233; colonialism, 78–80, 90; nationalism, 78–80, 88–94; travel writing, 78–80, 88–98, 233 Austria-Hungary (incl. AustroHungarian and Dual Monarchy), 10, 11, 80, 148–65, 174, 187; civilizing mission in the Balkans, 10, 148–61; colonial and cultural

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Austria-Hungary—(cont’d) mission, 155, 158–59; colonial enterprise, 149–50; identity, 10, 75, 148–65; imperialism, 65, 148– 65, 183, 210, 222; orientalism, 10, 30, 147, 150, 152, 153, 222 Baktay, Ervin, 179, 180, 184, 189 barbarian(-s), 38, 62 Bartol’d, Vasilii V., 195, 205, 206 Baum, Jiří, 216–17, 219, 220, 226, 227 Baum, Jiří, works by: Africkou divočinou: Autem z Prahy k Mysu Dobré Naděje [Through the African Wilderness: By Car from Prague to the Cape of Good Hope], 226–27 bedouin(-s), 89, 90, 91–94 Belinskii, Vissarion, 201 Bengal, Indian region of (including Bengali people and culture), 40, 43, 51–53, 139, 179, 183, 186, 188 Bengali, language, 51, 188 Berman, Nina, 3, 4, 13, 14, 74 Berman, Russell A., 2, 13, 57, 73, 76 bey (regional ruler in the Ottoman Empire), 237, 240 beyrik (region of the Ottoman Empire), 7 Bhatti, Anil, 27, 48, 52, 111, 116, 131, 146, 147, 165 Bhavnani Studios, Bombay, 9, 135, 137, 139–41 Bildungsroman (novel of education), 110 Bohemia (incl. Bohemian lands, society, and culture), 60, 65, 66, 80, 151, 210, 213, 222, 223, 234 Boisserée, Sulpiz, 33 Bombay (today Mumbai), 9, 121, 135, 137–43 border(-s), geo-political, 10, 58, 59, 62, 64, 69, 78, 80, 88, 92, 106, 148, 149, 150, 158, 204; conceptual, imagined, and cultural, 2, 10, 65, 66, 78, 81, 92–93, 136, 148, 157, 159, 191, 197, 216

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Bosnia-Herzegovina, 10, 148–52, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160–65; occupation and “civilizing” of, 54, 148–52, 155, 158, 160–65; people and culture of (incl. Bosnian Muslims), 10, 151, 155, 156, 157, 159, 160–65 bourgeois(-ie) (incl. bourgeois culture), 28, 115, 228; bourgeois morality/norms, 232, 233, 238 Boyle, Nicholas, 76 Brentano, Clemens von, 32 Brinckmann, Carl Gustav, 33 Britain (incl. British Empire), 106–10, 121, 193, 194, 202, 210, 211, 212, 215, 221, 224 British colonialism, imperialism, and rule, 3, 10, 27, 43, 44, 50, 52, 58, 100, 108, 110, 119, 120, 121–25, 129, 131, 136, 138, 141, 142–43, 168, 180, 190, 192, 195, 197, 200, 217–20; liberalism, 105–6; orientalism, 1, 42, 44, 73, 173, 191, 192, 194, 195, 206, 210, 211, 223; people and culture, 46, 47, 101, 106, 141, 178, 179, 180; travelers and travel writing, 211, 221, 223, 224 Brod, Max, 60, 75, 138 Buber, Martin, 61 Buddhism, 168, 177, 178, 188 Bulgaria (including Bulgarian people and culture), 167, 170, 186 Cairo, Egypt, 209, 216, 219, 220, 221, 223 Calcutta (today Kolkata), 40, 43, 121 capitalism, 10, 31, 32, 105, 176; print capitalism, 8, 99, 112 Castle, Eduard, 94–96, 98 Catherine II of Russia (“The Great”), 191, 207 Catholicism, Roman (incl. Catholics), 10, 35, 37, 45, 79, 82, 84, 85, 86, 96, 98, 100, 150, 151, 155, 156, 158, 160; and orientalism, 150–52

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INDEX Caucasus, 192, 193, 195, 197, 200, 203, 208 Chaadaev, Peter, 201 Chatterjee, Partha, 112, 116, 146 China (incl. Chinese people, language, and history), 58, 62, 63, 65, 72, 75, 178, 188, 192, 193, 210, 221, 223, 224, 240 Christ, Jesus, 98 Christianity (including Christian), 4, 9, 10, 29, 33, 36, 44, 61, 81–87, 93, 95, 98, 105, 106, 112, 170, 173, 177, 193. See also Catholicism; Protestant(-ism) Circassians, 200 civilization(-s): clash of, 27, 59; European, 37, 38, 42, 64, 98, 102, 103, 105, 107, 110, 113, 155, 159, 169, 190, 191, 199, 200–201, 210, 215–18, 220–22, 225; oriental (incl. and lack of), 36, 38, 62, 108, 109, 110, 144, 150, 169, 171, 197, 215–17, 220–22. See also Orient; oriental civilizing, mission of European powers, 10, 11, 62, 142, 150, 155–160, 196, 198, 202, 216, 217 classical, in terms of occidental culture (of Ancient Greece and Rome), 67, 69, 70, 141, 239; classic(al) forms of orientalism (as defined by Edward Said), 9, 53, 148, 149, 191, 196–98, 200, 206, 209, 210, 215; Classical philology, 171; as periods within/of oriental culture, 135, 139, 140 Clifford, James, 97, 202, 203 Cologne, 35 colonialism: at frontiers, 78–98; as internal, 42, 44, 45, 223; microcolonialism, 192, 204; as widespread historical practice or period of, 2–13, 31, 41, 43, 43, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 62, 72, 73–75. See also under individual nations and empires Colvin, Sarah, 4, 9, 14

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cosmopolitan(-ism), 35, 59, 64, 66–71, 96, 138, 142, 144 Crang, Mike, 14, 97 Crémieux, Albert, 101–2 Crimea, 103–7, 192, 195, 197, 199, 200, 204–7; annexation of, 198 Crimean War, 8, 99, 103–7, 111, 114, 201 Czech: identity, 209–27; language, 62, 213; nation, 209–27; nationalism, 61; noncolonial orientalism, 209– 27, esp. 210–11; republic(anism), 60, 209, 214, 224–25; society, 209–11, 213, 215, 217, 218, 220; travel writing, 209–27. See also Bohemia Czechoslovakia, 209, 213, 214, 217, 220, 224, 225 Damascus, (city of, today in Syria), 100–102, 113, 114, 234 Damascus Affair, 8, 99, 100–102, 103, 104, 111, 113, 114 Danilevskii, Nikolai, 199, 201, 207 De Ligne, Charles Joseph, 191 De Sacy, Silvestre, 194 De Tocqueville, Alexis, 199 Deckert, Joseph, 150, 151, 152, 162, 163 Democracy (incl. democrat(-s) and social), 29, 46, 58, 98, 106, 112, 130, 141, 155, 169, 199. See also liberalism Deployment, concept of (pertaining to Orientalist ideas, tropes, and strategies), 2, 4, 12, 13, 23, 37, 66, 72, 78, 112, 119, 126–29, 144, 191, 194, 201–2, 211, 220, 228. See also entries on individual national forms of orientalism Derrida, Jacques, 16, 22, 26–29; concept of hospitality, 26 dey (Ottoman regional ruler), 82 deylik (region of Ottoman Empire), 82 Dickens, Charles, 61 différance, Derridian concept of, 16, 26, 27

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difference, cultural (also incl. the German term Differenz), 2–5, 15–30, 58, 81, 87–95, 104, 109, 126, 143, 166, 191, 195, 211, 239; and gender, 238, 239 Donia, Robert J., 155, 164 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, 188, 201, 202, 208 Dunwoodie, Peter, 95, 97 Dürr, Timotheus Jakob, 9, 78–87, 93–94 Dusche, Michael, 8, 31–54 Dutch: colonialism, 120, 122, 125, 200, 208; people, 179 East, the, 1, 3, 6, 6–13, 17, 36, 42, 56, 57, 62–63, 67, 70–72, 75, 101–2, 105, 120, 126, 128, 153– 54, 158, 160, 169, 170, 175–78, 179, 180, 183, 192, 193, 195, 198, 200, 201, 202–4, 212, 215, 216, 217, 222–23, 225, 235, 239 Eastern (incl. cultures, empire, peoples, and languages), 3, 61, 63, 105, 154, 171, 179, 191, 192, 197, 203, 212. See also Asia; Asian; Europe; Orient; other École des langues orientales, Paris, 194 Egypt (incl. Egyptian history and culture), 56, 195, 209, 210, 212, 213, 216–18; travel writing on, 209–221 Egyptology, 209 Egyptomania, 213 Emmet, Dorothy, 28 English: language, 1, 39–41, 45, 47, 51, 59, 69, 106, 117, 119, 121, 122, 127, 128, 138, 142, 184–89, 190, 203, 236; people, 93, 106, 117, 180, 218, 236 enlightenment, the, 2, 3, 7, 13, 14, 15–16, 18, 21, 26, 28, 36, 38, 57, 73, 96, 103, 118, 190, 203, 222 ethnic(-ity), 8–11, 35, 36, 45, 46, 47, 49, 55, 61, 63, 81, 89, 97, 155–58, 179, 199, 204 Eurasian(-s), 201, 204, 208, 223

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Europe (as a geographical and cultural whole), 1–13, 17, 28, 31–32, 35, 38, 41–45, 47, 48, 53, 56–58, 61, 63, 66–67, 70, 72, 87, 90, 95–97, 100–101, 105–7, 109–9, 112, 113, 115, 118–20, 121, 122, 125, 126, 128, 129, 131, 134, 135–38, 142–43, 152–55, 157, 160, 161, 166, 168, 170, 171, 174–76, 192, 201–2, 203, 205, 207, 210–11, 213, 215, 218, 221, 223, 225, 226 european (peoples, cultures, and languages collectively), 1–13, 18, 34–35, 38, 41, 42, 44, 45–46, 47, 50, 52, 56–57, 58, 61, 62, 63, 65, 72, 75, 78, 79–80, 82–83, 85, 87, 91–92, 94, 95, 98, 99–103, 104–7, 111, 117–34, 137–39, 143, 151, 153, 156–57, 158, 161, 166, 173, 178, 185, 190–93, 195, 198, 201–2, 204, 206, 209–27, 228–29, 232–35, 236–38; Central and East(-ern) European, 1, 5, 6, 10, 11, 13, 174; central European (pre-20th century, geographical and cultural term), 161, 165, 214; eastern European (geography, people and culture pre-1945), 2, 58, 61, 72, 112, 136–39, 146, 174, 190–92, 203, 210, 222, 226; and trans- or pan-European tendencies in Orientalism, 12, 31, 56–57, 59, 61, 66, 71, 80, 218, 197, 238; West(-ern) European (geography, culture, and people), 1, 11, 12, 31, 41, 60–62, 169, 193–94, 198, 201, 209–210, 214, 215, 217, 218, 220, 222 Europeanization, 201 exile, 9, 10, 112 exile writing, 3, 135–47 Feichtinger, Johannes, 10, 148–65, 204, 208, 223 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 38, 45, 46, 51 Flaubert, Gustave, 12, 61, 173, 187, 230–41

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INDEX Forster, Georg, 3, 31, 117, 120, 128–30, 134 Forster, Johann, 120, 128 Foucault, Michel, 55, 57, 73, 223–32 Fouqué, Friedrich De la Motte, 78 France, 8, 12, 13, 31–54, 57, 79, 90, 101, 106, 173, 202, 211, 212, 224 Frankfurt School, 21 French: colonialism, 5, 9, 78–97, 100, 122, 125, 218, 221; cultural/ political hegemony, 31–35, 45; imperialism, 45, 64, 78–97, 100, 122, 125, 190–94, 197; language and culture, 5, 33, 38–42, 45, 47–52, 69, 78, 85, 91, 100–102, 119, 228–42; orientalism, 1, 44, 73, 173, 190–95, 210, 211, 215, 223, 228–42; people, national character, 31–54, 67, 69, 90; philosophy, 16, 26, 44, 136; republic, 44, 80: French Revolution (1789), 36, 42, 70, 79, 129–30; society, 32, 238 Gandhi, Mohandas Karamchand, 138, 179–80 Garai, Gábor, 180–81 Garai, Gábor, works by: “Beside the Ganges,” 180–81; Summer in March, 181 Gárdonyi, Géza, 175, 177, 180, 188 Gárdonyi, Géza, works by: Eclipse of the Crescent Moon above Eger, 177, 180 Geary, Patrick J., 60, 74 Geertz, Clifford, 97 gender, 4, 11, 12, 14, 81, 91–92, 97, 200, 208, 228–42 geography: and culture, 71; as fluid, 65; as global, 125; human geography, 81, 85, 88, 95; as imaginary concept in Edward Said’s thinking, 6, 7, 12, 81; of the Orient, 65, 108, 119, 168, 180; physical or topographical, 86. See also space Georgia (Caucusus), 193, 199

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German: colonialism, 2, 74, 116; language, 3, 4, 5, 7, 9, 31–54, 51, 58, 61, 64, 69, 72, 74, 73, 78–80, 95–96, 101, 107, 120–128, 135– 138, 226, 233; literature, 3, 4, 13, 14, 15–30, 31–54, 55–77, 99–116, 117–134, 135–147, 228–242; nationalism, 31, 44, 45, 47, 53, 58, 136; orientalism, 31–54, 55–77, 78–98, 99–116, 117–134, 228–242; people, 33–43, 52, 54, 57–59, 60, 63, 69, 70, 110 118, 131, 135, 142, 145, 174, 193; philosophy, 1–13; 15–30; 31–54, 69; 127–131; 167–169; romanticism, 8, 31–54, 67–70; 118, 126, 131, 135. See also exile writing; travel writing German Democratic Republic (GDR), 58, 137 Germany, 1–13, 17, 20, 31–54, 55–77, 101, 108, 114; as true oriental self of Europe, 31–54 Gilroy, Paul, 25, 29 global: culture and politics, 10–13, 55–56, 64–73, 118, 125–26, 192, 202, 207, 211–12, 214; global history, 119–20, 127–29 globalization, 25, 59–60, 163, 217, 225 Goedsche, Hermann (pseud. Sir John Retcliffe), 106–10, 115 Goedsche, Hermann, works by: Nena Sahib oder die Empörung in Indien, 110, 116; Sebastopol, 106, 107, 110 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (von), 3, 8, 33, 53, 55, 61, 66–77, 179 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang (von), works by: Dichtung und Wahrheit, 67–68; Faust, 69–71; Götz von Berlichingen, 69; Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, 69; Literarischer Sansculottismus, 69; Römische Elegien, 67; West-östlicher Divan, 66–70; Wilhelm Meisters Wanderjahre, 66 Golwalkar, M. S., 46 Gorchakov, Aleksandr M., 198, 206

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Göttingen, University of, 36, 119, 125, 127, 130–34, 168 Greco-Roman art, 29, 37, 44, 140 Greek (incl. Greece, modern and ancient Greek people, and ancient Greek language), 36, 38, 39, 40–41, 45, 69, 155, 169 Grillparzer, Franz, 61 Haas, Willi, 9–10, 135–47 Haas, Willi, works by: Germans beyond Germany, 135, 142, 145; Die literarische Welt, 135–49 Habermas, Jürgen, 7, 8, 15–30; concept of discourse without domination (herrschaftsfreier Diskurs), 8, 20, 24; concept of orality, 22–23; concept of publicity (Öffentlichkeit), 22–23, 28; concept of translation, 16–17, 19–20 Habermas, Jürgen, works by: Der gespaltene Westen (2006: The Divided West), 21; Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit (1965: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere), 22, 28; Die Theorie des kommunikativen Handelns (1981: The Theory of Communicative Action), 20, 28; Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion (2005: Between Naturalism and Religion), 21–22, 28, 29 Habsburg (dynasty, monarchy, period), 11, 14, 61, 75, 148–65, 166–75, 185, 192, 197, 203–8, 220–23. See also Austria-Hungary; Hungary Hafis (of Shiraz, 14th-century Persian poet), 68 Hahn-Hahn, Ida Gräfin von, 12, 232– 34, 238, 240 Hajnóczy, Rózsa G., 179, 180, 183, 188, 189 Hajnóczy, Rózsa G., works by: Bengal Fire, 179, 183, 188 Halle, University of, 117–20, 123, 128, 132

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Hamann, Johann Georg, 37 Hamilton, Alexander, 32 Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph von, 68, 173 Hardt, Michael, 59, 74 harem, 12, 92, 174, 198; as brothel, 233; as prison, 237–38; as sensual, 234–37 Hawaii, 194 Healy, Maureen, 160, 165 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 7, 29, 31, 33, 44, 48, 53 hegemony, 45, 64, 216; Christian, 87; European, 10, 31, 135, 142–44, 222 Heine, Heinrich, 103, 104, 114 Heiss, Johann, 10, 148–66 Helfert, Joseph Alexander, 150–52, 154–57, 158, 159, 160, 162–65 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 3, 7, 9, 17, 25, 28, 35–37, 44, 45, 69, 127, 130, 131, 167–69; forecast of the extinction of Hungarian language, 168 Herder, Johann Gottfried, works by: Abhandlung über den Ursprung der Sprachen, 28, 37–38; Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, 167 Herzen, Alexander, 201 Herzl, Theodor, 61–62 Hindi, culture, 141; language, 182 Hindu(-s), 42, 46, 49, 50, 52, 54, 109, 123–25 hinduism, 144 Hodkinson, James, 1–14, 47, 78–98, 115 Hofmannsthal, Hugo von, 3, 61, 139 Holy Land, the, 193, 224 Horkheimer, Max, 21 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 7–8, 15–30, 32; concept of translation, 16–17, 19–20, 23 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, works by: Einleitung in das gesamte Sprachstudium, 27; Theorie der Bildung des Menschen, 27; Über das vergleichende Sprachstudium

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INDEX in Beziehung auf die verschiedenen Epochen der Sprachentwicklung, 18, 28 Hungarian(s), the Huns, 171–72; diet of, 90; forms of orientalism in the 19th century, 166–73; forms of orientalism in the 20th century, 173–84; Hungarian language, 166– 68, 185; narratives of Hungarian origins, 166–70; nationalism, 90, 166–70; romanticism, 167, 170–71 Hungary, nation/kingdom of, 10, 80, 152, 157, 158, 161, 166–89; as a ferry-land between occident and orient, 177; and/as the Orient, 166–89 Huntington, Samuel, 16, 27 Huntington, Samuel, works by: The Clash of Civilizations, 16, 21, 27, 59 Huxley, Thomas Henry, 46 Ibsen, Henrik, 139–141 Il’minskii, Nikolai I., 195 imagined communities, 36, 93, 113, 180, 184, 186, 189. See also Anderson, Benedict India, 8–10, 107–13, 135–47, 169, 170, 175, 177–79, 180–83, 187–89, 196, 206, 210, 221; British colonization of, 43, 119–20, 131, 136, 138, 143, 197, 200, 218; as object of Western study or discourse, 31–54, 99–100, 107–13; as place of exile, 135–47 Indian: cinema, 140–44; history, 117–134, 99–100, 107–13, 141, 147; language(-s), 31–54 (see also Bengali; Hindi; Sanskrit); literature, 8, 9, 38–39, 141, 147, 175–79, 181, 182, 187–89, 213; religion, 36, 37, 44, 124, 133 (see also Buddhism; Hinduism; Islam); Indian Revolt (1857), 8, 99, 107– 16; society, 43, 142–43 indo-european (ethnic and linguistic family) (incl. Proto

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Indo-European), 36–46, 47, 51, 117 indology (incl. indologists), 10, 31, 42, 44, 48, 51, 108–9, 118, 130, 135, 138, 141, 144, 179, 213 intercultural (incl. interculturality), 5–8, 12, 15–30, 204; communication, 15–30; contamination, 92 Irwin, Robert, 192, 203–204 Islam(-ic), 10, 11, 13, 14, 59, 89–91, 95, 105–6, 125, 135, 153–57, 164, 165, 195, 200, 204–5. See also Muslim Italy (incl. Italian people, culture, and language), 65–69, 76, 122, 139, 155, 193, 212 Ivan IV of Russia (The Terrible), 193 Japan (incl. Japanese language, culture, and people), 120, 178, 192, 193, 211, 221, 223, 224; Japanese orientalism, 211, 221–23 Jew(-s) (incl. Judaism and antisemitism), 3, 4, 8, 27, 33, 39, 58–75, 82, 93, 98, 100–103, 115, 136–39, 143, 146, 150–52, 172, 188; image of, 99–103, 11, 113– 15; as threat, 151 jewish: diaspora, 63; mysticism, 60; press, 99, 101–2 Jobst, Kerstin, 11, 190–208, 223 Jókai, Mór, 171–74, 177, 183, 186, 187 Jókai, Mór, works by: The Golden Age of Transylvania, 172–73, 187; The Last Days of Janissaries, 172; The Turkish Age in Hungary, 172; The White Rose, 172 Jones, William, 40, 52, 117 journalism (incl. the media and press), 8, 59, 99–116, 169, 178–79, 198 Juhász, Ferenc, 180–83, 189 Juhász, Ferenc, works by: “On the Death of Raghuvir Sahay,” 182 Kafka, Franz, 8, 55, 60–64, 71–73, 74–77, 138

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Kafka, Franz, works by: Der Aufbruch, 63; Beim Bau der chinesischen Mauer, 62–63; Ein altes Blatt, 62; Ein Bericht für eine Akademie, 63; Schakale und Araber, 62; Der Verschollene [Amerika], 62 Kalidasa (Sanskrit writer, ca. 5th Century), 31, 117, 139 Kállay, Benjamin von, 150–52, 156– 58, 160, 163, 165 Kant, Immanuel, 7, 8, 19–27, 28–29; concept of regulative ideal, 8, 19, 20, 25, 28 Karayanni, Stavros Stavrou, 231, 239 Kathiawar, region of India, 140 Kazem-Bek, Aleksandr, 195, 205 Kerala, Indian region of, 139 Keune, Jon, 9, 117–34 Khanate: of Astrakhan, 193; of Kazan, 193; of Khiva, 197. See also Crimea Kleist, Heinrich von, 33, 61 Klement, František, 216, 220, 224, 226 Klement, František, works by: Z Jaffy do Jerusalema [From Jaffa to Jerusalem], 224, 226 Klinkowström, Max von, 150–54, 163–64 Kliuchevskii, Vasilii O., 199, 207 Königsberg, 130 Kontje, Todd, 3, 4, 8, 11, 13, 14, 55–77, 223 Kőrös, Alexander de Csoma, 168, 185 Kőrös, Alexander de Csoma, works by: Grammar of the Tibetan Language, 168 Köves, Margit, 166–89 Kristeva, Julia, 26–27 Kristeva, Julia, works by: Etrangers a Nous-Memes (1988: Strangers to Ourselves), 26, 29–30 Kuchuk, Hanem, 230, 231, 238–39 language, as abstract phenomenon in thought and theory, 6, 7, 9, 15–30, 37–38, 56, 60, 63, 81, 86, 97, 139, 153, 156, 158, 159, 167–168, 177, 230. See entries on individual

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languages and associated terms (e.g., eastern; oriental). See also translation Lazarev Institute of Oriental Languages, 195 Lefebvre, Henri, 55, 73 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 37 Leipzig, University of, 68 Leipziger Allgemeine Zeitung (LAZ), 101–2, 114 Lemmen, Sarah, 202, 204, 209–27 Lemon, Robert, 10, 12, 47, 75, 162, 222–23 Lermontov, Mikhail, 198 Levada Center (Russian polling and sociological research organization), 191 liberalism (incl. liberal and liberals), 22–24, 45, 79, 94, 98, 105–6, 108, 109, 111, 141, 150, 152–53, 155, 169, 174–75 Lukács, Georg, 137, 140, 146, 175, 177, 187–88 Lukács, Georg, works by: Soul and Form, 177, 188 Maghreb, the, 7, 78–98 Magris, Claudio, 61, 75 Mahler, Gustav, 65 Maier, Charles M., 197, 206 Mann, Thomas, 3, 8, 55, 61, 64–66, 72–73, 75, 76 Mann, Thomas, works by: Betrachtungen eines Unpolitischen, 64, 66, 75–76; Buddenbrooks, 64–65; Der Tod in Venedig, 65–66; Tonio Kröger, 65 Marathas, Indian warrior caste. See Sprengel, Matthias Christian Marchand, Suzanne L., 4, 14, 56–57, 73–74, 162, 223 Marx, Karl, 43, 52, 53, 146 marxism (incl. Marxists), 136 Masaryk, Tomáš Garrigue, 212–14, 224, 225 Massey, Doreen, 55, 71, 73 Matiegková, Ludmila, 209, 220, 221

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INDEX Matiegková, Ludmila, works by: V objetí sfingy [In the Embrace of the Sphinx], 221 Maupassant, Guy de, 12, 231–32, 237–38, 239 Mazumdar, Shaswati, 8, 14, 47, 48, 99–116, 131 Metternich, Klemens von, 44, 80, 90 Middle Ages, 32, 44, 46, 98, 216, 226 Mill, James, 43, 141 Mill, John Stuart, 46 modernity (incl. modern), 3, 21, 23–24, 29, 31, 32, 39, 42, 45, 48, 65, 73, 74, 112, 138, 146, 219; and orientalism, 3, 4, 10, 12, 13, 17, 24–25, 41–45, 48–49, 100, 141, 143, 146–47, 167, 173, 175, 179, 182–83, 211–12, 216–17, 222, 224 Mohammed, Prophet of Islam, 67, 200 Muhamedanismus, erroneous German name for Islam, 108, 165 Muselman, variation on Muslim, 89, 109, 115 Mordvinov, Nikolai, 199, 206–7 Moscow, 193, 195, 196; Grand Duchy of, 193 Möser, Justus, 69 Mozart, Wolfgang Amadeus, 213 Müller, Adam, 67 Musil, Alois, 213–14, 225 Musil, Alois, works by: Naše úkoly v orientalistice a v orientě [Our Tasks in Oriental Studies and in the Orient], 214, 225 Muslim(-s), 10, 14, 42, 59, 73, 82, 87, 89, 96–98, 105, 109, 115, 123–26, 143, 149, 151, 155–58, 165, 179, 191–200, 204, 231. See also Islam Napoleon (Bonaparte), 33, 35, 43, 67, 80, 130, 194 Napoleonic Wars, 35, 67, 72, 80 National Socialists (incl. National Socialism, Nazis, Nazism), 9, 47, 58, 64, 98, 111, 135, 137, 139

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nationalism, generally, 31, 34–36, 45–46, 47, 49, 51, 53, 55, 60, 64, 67, 94, 96, 99, 112–13, 118, 130–31, 153–55, 170, 183; cultural nationalism, 155, 159; ethnic nationalism, 35, 45, 46–47, 49, 55, 63, 155; print nationalism, 169; state nationalism, 155, 159. See especially entries on individual nations Negri, Antonio, 59, 74 Neue Preußische Zeitung (Kreuzzeitung), 105–8, 115 Neue Sachlichkeit, 139–40 Nicholas I of Russia, 200 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 46 nomad (incl. nomadic people and culture), 171, 197–98 Occident, the (incl. occidental and Occidentalism), 11, 47, 135, 141, 144, 149, 160, 173, 223, 228, 232, 237. See also West Occident-Orient Research Network, the, vii, 47 Okey, Robin, 155 Online Maghreb Bibliothek, die, 95–96 Orient, the (by sub-theme): and backwardness, 43–44, 105, 158, 161, 167, 180, 192, 201, 206, 216, 220; as close to home (incl. near), 148–65; as cradle of civilization, 126, 169, 214; as decadent, 66; as deceptive, 231; as distant, 61, 63, 99, 126, 148–65; within Europe, 6–13, 31–54, 55–77, 148–65, 190–208, 209–27; as exotic, 1, 3, 11, 62, 72, 75, 107, 110, 117, 137, 192, 220, 236; as gendered, 11, 12, 14, 81, 90–92, 97, 200, 208, 228–41; as geographical (including concepts of geographical fluidity and location of), 1–12, 31, 55, 57, 61, 65–65, 70, 71, 72–73, 78–98, 100, 108, 118, 109, 120, 123, 135–37, 143– 44, 148, 154, 166–68, 171,

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Orient, the (by sub-theme)—(cont’d) 176, 180, 183, 190–93, 200, 205–7, 210, 211–14, 215, 220, 222; as imaginary, 2, 6–7, 12, 60, 67, 72, 75, 81, 97, 201, 238; as neighbor(-s) of Europe, 70, 126, 148–165; as opportunity, 3, 150, 159–60, 200, 228; as sexualized, 11–12, 90–92, 110, 198–200, 228–41; as tabula rasa, 87; as threat, 4, 13, 61, 62, 81, 88, 90–93, 101–3, 150–52, 158–60, 233; as uncivilized, 1, 107, 216. See also Oriental; Orientalism; Said, Edward. For the function of the Orient see also entries on individual nations oriental(-s): inner oriental, 100–103; languages, 4, 17, 195, 205; question (“die orientalische Frage”), 99, 103–7; studies (incl. Orientalistik), 4, 5, 7, 15–17, 20, 25–26, 31–54, 113, 117–34, 135– 47, 148–65, 171, 174, 190, 193– 95, 204, 213–14; as treacherous, 160. See also Asian; other Oriental Museum, Vienna (Orientalisches Museum), 153, 160 orientalism (by sub-theme): catholic Orientalism, 10, 150–53; central European forms of, 61, 148–65, 166–89, 209–27; and concept of power, 1, 7, 20–21, 43, 57, 81, 93, 96, 191, 194, 196, 202, 209–10, 211, 218, 228; defensive orientalism, 173, 177, 183; as disenchanted, 3, 117–34; dissemination of, 167, 175, 183; as form of dominance, 8, 13, 15–29, 43, 194, 196, 197, 200, 202, 229, 231; frontier orientalism, 77–98, 192, 204, 205; as internal colonialism, 42–45, 223; local orientalism(-s), 8, 11, 55–77; negative forms of, 43, 52–57, 72, 89, 94, 150, 177, 215, 217, 232, 233, 234; noncolonial orientalism, 192, 209–27; positive forms of,

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42–45, 173, 200, 201, 232; reverse orientalism, 42, 61; and Zionism, 60, 62, 75. See also individual nations for variants (Austria; France; Germany; Hungary; Russia et al.) orientalist (by sub-theme): discourse, 10, 42, 75, 98, 135, 148, 153, 156, 159, 161, 164, 166, 170, 192, 198, 201, 209, 212, 220, 240; politics (incl. politicians), 99–116, 148–65, 190–208; scholars(-hip), 17, 42–44, 53, 57, 75, 99, 109, 118, 126–31, 162, 193–95, 203, 214, 240 (see also oriental studies; see also under named individuals); tropes, 2, 4, 11, 12, 80, 95, 105, 125, 135, 162, 166, 169, 175, 191 Orme, Robert, 122, 124, 133 Osterhammel, Jürgen, 118, 126, 128, 129, 130, 133, 134, 202–4, 208 other, the: in alterity theory, 1–12, 15–30; eastern, 154; European, 191; oriental, 8, 15, 44, 59, 80, 81, 153, 158, 171–74, 190, 194, 196, 198, 210, 211, 215, 219 otherness, concept of, 5, 15–16, 81, 118, 137, 239 Ottoman Empire (incl. Ottomans and Ottoman rule), 7, 10, 61, 82, 89, 99, 100, 104–7, 113, 117, 148–65, 173, 192, 197, 203, 205, 211, 223, 240. See also Turks pagan peoples and cultures, 192 Parekh, Bhikhu, 25 Paris, 31–35, 68, 103, 194, 203, 236; as capital of the universe, 32 partition (of India), 136 patriotism, 35, 63, 67, 69, 79, 80, 94, 96, 185 Persia(-n) (incl. culture, language, nation, and people), 36–41, 49 Peter I (“The Great”), 190 Pfeiffer, Ida, 12, 233–34, 238, 240 Philippines, 199 Plapp, Laurel, 62, 75

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INDEX Polaschegg, Andrea, 5, 14, 15–16, 19–20, 27, 28, 83, 91, 97, 100, 107, 113, 115, 204, 223; concepts of das Eigene and das Andere, 16, 27; concepts of das Vertraute and das Fremde, 16, 19–20, 27, 81 Pollock, Sheldon, 48, 52, 53 Popper, Karl, 27, 30 Portugal (incl. Portuguese people and Portuguese colonialism), 113, 117, 120, 122, 193 postcolonial(-ism), 6, 7, 48, 97, 112, 131, 148, 164, 203, 204, 208, 215, 218, 223, 224, 240 power (concept and use of in oriental discourse). See alterity; orientalism. For powers as nations or empires, see entries for individual nations private (versus public) use of reason, 21–22, 26–27 Protestant(-ism), 20, 42, 64, 65, 79, 82, 83, 84, 85, 93, 96, 123, 151, 196 Pückler-Muskau, Hermann Graf von, 12, 229, 230, 237–238, 239 Punjab, region, 139, 142 race (incl. racial and interracial), 4, 10, 14, 29, 35, 56, 64, 66, 73 104, 117–18, 126, 127, 129, 134, 141, 200, 223, 239 racism, 35, 49, 50, 136, 195, 200, 205 Raeff, Marc, 201, 208 Ranke, Leopold von, 105, 115 Religion(-s). See individual faiths (e.g., Buddhism; Christianity; Hinduism; Islam; Judaism) Republic(-anism), 44–46, 80, 130, 214. See also individual nations Retcliffe, Sir John. See Goedsche, Hermann Roberts, Mary, 236, 240 Robertson, Ritchie, 74, 75, 96 Rolland, Romain, 138 romance, languages and cultures, 39, 41

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romanticism. See under German; Hungarian Roosevelt, Theodore, 199, 207 Ruhe, Ernstpeter, 95–96 Russia, 2, 10, 11; and the Crimea, 197, 199–201; and the Orient, functions of in Russian discourse, 201–2; and the Orient, location of in Russian discourse, 191–93 Russian: empire (incl. imperialism), 10, 105–7, 190–208; forms of orientalism, 193–94; language, 194, 197, 203; and oriental studies, 194–96; revolutions, 106–7, 190– 91, 192–195 Sabharwal, Jyoti, 135–47 Said, Edward, 1–14, 15–17, 25, 29, 43, 49, 52, 53, 56, 57, 61, 71, 73, 80, 81, 90, 96–98, 126, 131, 135, 145, 148–49, 156–57, 161, 162, 184, 190–96, 198, 200, 201, 200–6, 210, 221, 222, 224, 230, 239–40 St. Petersburg, 193, 205; St. Petersburg School of Oriental Studies, 195 Sanskrit, 31–32, 36–41, 43, 45, 47–48, 50, 51–53, 56, 117, 118, 130, 131, 139 sati, old Indian practice of, 52, 142, 147, 170 Savarkar, V. D., 46 Scala, Arthur von, 153, 160 Scala, Rudolf von, 150, 153, 160 Schiller, Friedrich, 69 Schimmelpenninck van der Oye, David, 191, 192, 195, 203–8, 223 Schlegel, August Wilhelm, 27, 41, 47, 50, 52, 67 Schlegel, Dorothea, 33–35 Schlegel, Friedrich, 8, 17, 31–54, 67, 131 Schlegel, Friedrich, works by: Athenaeum, 32; Europa, 34, 48, 49; Lucinde, 32–33, 49, 52; “Reise nach Frankreich,” 31–32, 48, 49; Über die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier, 31, 36–41, 47, 50–53

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Schleiermacher, Friedrich, 22, 25, 27, 29, 49 Schlözer, August, 119, 127, 130, 131, 134 Schwartz, Marie Espérance von, 234– 39, 240 Schwarzenberg, Friedrich Fürst zu, 9, 78–83, 87–98 self, the, esp. in alterity and postcolonial theories, 12, 22, 154, 158, 175–78, 200, 204, 210–12; Czech sense of, 209–27; Germany as true oriental self in Europe, 31, 41–47; 53–57; self-critique, 10, 14, 75, 162, 222; self-reflexion (incl. reflexivity), 5, 10, 24, 72, 178, 180, 222 selfhood, 22 serfdom (incl. abolition in Russia, 1861), 191, 198 sexuality, 11, 12, 67, 72, 91–92, 98, 110, 198, 200, 228–242; dissociation of from desire, 230–38; as essence of the Orient, 229; and (im-)morality, 91–92; as metaphor for occidental-oriental relations, 91–92, 228–42 shared experiences, historical concept of, 148–50, 159–61 shared histories, 5, 10 Sheehan, James J., 68, 76 Siberia, 192, 193, 197, 204 Slavic peoples and nations, 10, 58, 65, 148–65, 168, 194, 196–97, 201, 207; slavophile(-s), 201; Southern Slavs, 10, 148, 149, 151, 155–56, 159 Smirnov, Vasilii D., 195, 205, 206 Soviet Union, 196, 200, 203, 206, 208 space, geo-physical, 11, 81, 87–89, 93, 100, 171; colonial, 83, 87–89, 93, 97; cultural, 11, 18, 55–56, 61, 71–72, 73–75, 87–89, 171; ideal space, between languages and cultures, occident and orient, colonizer and colonized, 18–20, 24, 142, 211, 235; feminine space,

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92, 228–42; gendered, 11, 12, 92, 228–42; hybrid space, 236; (im-)moral, 91–92; oriental, 3, 11, 12, 92, 112, 237; religious space, 79–87, 105; sensual space, 235, 237; shared, concept of, 149–50, 161; of transition (Übergangsgebilde), 149, 160, 161; unknown space, 93 Spain (incl. spanish culture, empire, language, and people), 58, 78, 113, 200, 221, 237; spanish orientalism, 221 spatial turn, in scholarship, 81 Spector, Scott, 60, 61, 74, 75 Spencer, Herbert, 46 Sprengel, Matthias Christian, 9, 117–34 Sprengel, Matthias Christian, works by: Die Geschichte der Maratten bis auf den lezten Frieden mit England den 17. Mai 1782, 117, 119, 121–24, 127, 129, 131; Hyder Ali und Tippo Saheb, 124–25, 133; Über den Krieg der Engländer in Ostindien, 121, 133 Stamm, Ulrike, 11–12, 98, 228–41 Stifter, Adalbert, 61 Stoler, Ann Laura, 228, 239 Stoll, André, 241 Sudraka (Sanskrit writer, ca. 7th century), 139 Széchenyi, István, 169, 178, 186, 188 Tatars (Crimean), 191, 193, 197–98, 200, 202, 206 Thapar, Romila, 141, 147 1001 Nights, 234 Thrift, Nigel, 14, 97 Tieck, Ludwig, 68 Timofeyevich, Yermak, 193 Todorov, Tzvetan, 13–14 translation, between languages cultures, occident and orient, 8, 15–30, 68, 97, 128 transnational(-ism), 15, 59, 61, 66, 71, 80, 109, 113, 197, 203–204, 238, 239

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INDEX travel writing (concerning the Orient), 3, 9, 78–98, 178–83, 209–27, 228–42. See also entries for individual nations Treitschke, Heinrich von, 46 turkophilia, 151, 159, 160 Turks (incl. Turkish people, language, and representations of), 8, 10, 43, 53, 59, 71–72, 82–90, 93, 94, 99, 103, 105–8, 115, 127, 148–65, 166–89, 195, 233; as menace, 151, 160, 161. See also Ottoman UFA (Universum Film AG), 139 USA, United States of America (incl. American, American History, and American people), 13, 43, 48, 63, 93, 119, 120, 126, 129, 132, 137, 197; American orientalism, 43, 191, 221; Declaration of Independence, 119–20; empire and imperialism, 190, 199, 204 Varnhagen, Rahel, 33 Vedic Ages, the, 141 Veit, Dorothea (née Mendelsson). See Schlegel, Dorothea Vienna, 35, 45, 61, 67, 80, 94, 148–65, 214, 219; bicentennial anniversary of, 148; Congress of Vienna, 45; orientalism in, 148–165; Siege of and defeat of the Ottoman army (1683), 148 Volga-Kama region, 197 Volk (incl. Völker and völkisch), 19, 37, 52, 54, 63, 102–3, 108, 127– 30, 154, 156–58; Völkerkunde (Ethnology), 119, 127, 134; Völkerwanderung, 60 Volks-Zeitung, 108, 115 Vörösmarty, Mihály, 169–70, 186

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Vörösmarty, Mihály, works by: Athenaeum, 169–70, 186, 188; The Flight of Zalán, 170–72, 186; “Zrinyi,” 170 Vucinich, Wayne, 190, 202, 205 Wackenroder, Wilhelm Heinrich, 68 Wagenbach, Klaus, 60, 74 Walker, John, 1–14, 15–30 Weber, Max, 36, 50, 118 Weltgeschichte (incl. world history), 69, 74, 119, 122, 127, 130 Weltliteratur (incl. world literature), 67, 70–71, 74, 77 Weöres, Sándor, works by/in translation, 175, 178, 180, 187 West, the, 15–30, 41–42, 71, 140, 154, 169, 170, 183, 190–91, 196, 198–99, 201, 211, 215–17, 223. See also America; Europe Western, 1, 6, 7, 10, 13, 37, 43, 44, 46, 47, 53, 55, 57, 61, 63, 73, 75, 81, 89, 97, 105, 106, 111, 140, 142, 144, 145, 152, 155–59, 162, 166, 168, 169, 174, 177, 179, 184, 190, 191, 194, 195, 201, 209, 210, 214, 215, 217, 218–20, 222, 239. See also colonialism; European; Imperialism Westerner(-s), 174, 218 westernizer(-s) (incl. Westernization), 201, 208 Winternitz, Moritz, 138, 147, 213 Wolff, Larry, 203, 222, 226 Zantop, Susanne, 2, 13, 57–58, 73–74, 79 zapadniki (Russian concept of Westernizers), 201 Zimmerman, Harro, 32–34, 48–49

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Cover design: Frank Gutbrod

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Cover image: “L’Empereur d’Allemagne en Voyage” (The Emperor of Germany on His Travels), illustration by Henri Meyer (1844–1899) from the front page of Le Petit Journal, illustrated supplement, November 6, 1898. Courtesy of the Gallica Digital Libraries of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris.

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Researcher at the Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften.

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James Hodkinson is Associate Professor in German Studies at Warwick University. John Walker is Senior Lecturer in European Cultures and Languages at Birkbeck College, University of London. Shaswati Mazumdar is Professor in German at the University of Delhi. Johannes Feichtinger is a

From Germany to Central and Eastern Europe

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Hodkinson, Kerstin S. Jobst, Jon Keune, Todd Kontje, Margit Köves, Sarah Lemmen, Shaswati Mazumdar, Jyoti Sabharwal, Ulrike Stamm, John Walker.

Deploying Orientalism in Culture and History

Edited by odkinson and alker with azumdar and eichtinger

Contributors: Michael Dusche, Johannes Feichtinger, Johann Heiss, James

Deploying Orientalism Culture and History

“Deploying Orientalism in Culture and History expands and deepens our understanding of European orientalist discourses by not only examining the relatively neglected field of Germanophone orientalism, but also by looking further east to encompass the utterly overlooked orientalisms of Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Russia. This collection is required reading for anyone interested in orientalism, travel writing, and the cultural history of Central and Eastern Europe.” —Robert Lemon, University of Oklahoma, author of Imperial Messages: Orientalism as Self-Critique in the Habsburg Fin-de-Siècle

in

T

he concept and study of orientalism in Western culture gained a changed understanding from Edward Said’s now iconic 1978 book Orientalism. However, recent debate has moved beyond Said’s definition of the phenomenon, highlighting the multiple forms of orientalism within the “West,” the manifold presence of the “East” in the Western world, indeed the epistemological fragility of the ideas of “Occident” and “Orient” as such. This volume focuses on the deployment—here the cultural, philosophical, political, and scholarly uses—of “orientalism” in the German-speaking and Central and Eastern European worlds from the late eighteenth century to the present day. Its interdisciplinary approach combines distinguished contributions by Indian scholars, who approach the topic of orientalism through the prism of German studies as practiced in Asia, with representative chapters by senior German, Austrian, and English-speaking scholars working at the intersection of German and oriental studies.

Edited by J ames

Hodkinson and John Walker with Shaswati Mazumdar and Johannes Feichtinger