Europe in Upheaval: Identity in Politics, Literature and Film 3476058824, 9783476058829

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Europe in Upheaval Identity in Politics, Literature and Film

Edited by Michaela Nicole Raß · Kay Wolfinger

Europe in Upheaval

Michaela Nicole Raß  •  Kay Wolfinger Editors

Europe in Upheaval Identity in Politics, Literature and Film

Editors Michaela Nicole Raß Institut für Deutsche Philologie Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Munich, Germany

Kay Wolfinger Institut für Deutsche Philologie Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München Munich, Germany

ISBN 978-3-476-05882-9    ISBN 978-3-476-05883-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 The translation was done with the help of artificial intelligence (machine translation by the service DeepL.com). A subsequent human revision was done primarily in terms of content. This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Reihen-Cover: Abhandlungen zur Medien- und Kulturwissenschaft (in grün) This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature. The registered company address is: Heidelberger Platz 3, 14197 Berlin, Germany

Contents

Part I Europe in Upheaval. Identity in Politics, Literature and Film   1  Europe Is Everywhere: Introductory Thoughts����������������������������������������������   3 Michaela Nicole Raß and Kay Wolfinger Part II Europe as a (Political) Construct in Light of Culture (and) Theory  11  The House of Europe ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  13 Ulrich Brückner Part III Europe: A Fiction? Current Constructions of Europe as Idea, Concept, Image, Cultural Conception  25 Of the Price of Freedom and Walk-in Books����������������������������������������������������  27 Christoph Augustynowicz Working on Europe��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  35 Kay Wolfinger Part IV Europe and Europeans: An Identity-Forming Entity?  45  Europe and the Concept of Empire������������������������������������������������������������������  47 Oliver Jahraus  Political Particularism and the European Public Sphere������������������������������  63 Ulrike Zitzlsperger  Reflections on the ‘good European’ in the Phase of Brexism������������������������  77 Rüdiger Görner Part V Images of Europe in Film and Contemporary Literature: Utopias and Dystopias  89 Europe as Utopia and Dystopia in the Films of Jean-Luc Godard and Lars von Trier ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������  91 Henry Keazor v

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Maps, Zones�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 107 Stephan Kammer  Believe in Europe?���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 121 To Johannes Wende  Europe at High Sea�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 135 Michael Braun  The Decline of Democracy in Alexander Schimmelbusch’s Novel Hochdeutschland������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 145 Michaela Nicole Raß  Crisis or Upheaval? Reflections on Brexit in Literature and Film: An Overview ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 155 Michaela Nicole Raß

Notes on Contributors

Christoph  Augustynowicz  is a professor at the Institute for Eastern European History at the University of Vienna. In 2019, together with Johannes Frimmel, he edited the anthology Der Buchdrucker Maria Theresias. Johann Thomas Trattner (1719–1798) und sein Medienimperium heraus. Michael Braun  is an adjunct professor at the University of Cologne and literary advisor to the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. Most recently, together with Hans Thill, he edited the volume Aus Mangel an Beweisen. Deutschsprachige Lyrik des 21. Jahrhunderts heraus. The title of his latest monograph is Probebohrungen im Himmel. Zum religiösen Trend in der Gegenwartsliteratur. Ulrich  Brückner  is Jean Monnet Professor for European Studies at the Berlin Center at Stanford University. The title of his latest monograph is Das Zusammenspiel im politischen Prozess der EU. Rüdiger  Görner  is Professor of German with Comparative Literature and Founding Director of the Centre for Anglo-German Cultural Relations at Queen Mary University of London. His most recent publications are Brexismus oder: Verortungsversuche im Dazwischen and Franz Kafkas akustische Welten. Oliver  Jahraus  is Professor of Modern German Literature and Media and Vice President for Studies and Teaching at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. Most recently, together with Hanni Geiger and Elisabeth Weiss, he edited the volume Faust und die Wissenschaften. Aktuelle Zugänge und Perspektiven in wissenschaftlicher Vielfalt. Stephan  Kammer  is a professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich. His most recent monograph is entitled Überlieferung. Das philologisch-­ antiquarische Wissen im frühen 18. Jahrhundert. Henry  Keazor  is Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art History at the Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg. Most recently he edited the volume We are all Astronauts. The Image of the Space Traveler in Arts and Media. Michaela  Nicole  Raß  was a research assistant at the Ludwig-MaximiliansUniversität München in Munich. Most recently, she co-edited the volume Sache/

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Ding: Eine ästhetische Leitdifferenz in der Medienkultur der Weimarer Republik with Oliver Jahraus and Simon Eberle. Johannes Wende  is a screenwriter, director and research assistant at the University of Television and Film in Munich. Most recently he edited the volume Woody Allen. Film Konzepte. Kay Wolfinger  is a research associate at the Institute for German Philology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München in Munich. His book project in preparation for 2021 is Das Archiv der Geister – Der Geist des Archivs. Ulrike  Zitzlsperger  is Professor of Modern Languages and Cultures at the University of Exeter. Her most recent work is the Historical Dictionary of Berlin (Historical Dictionaries of Cities, States, and Regions).

List of Figures

Fig. 1 (a, b) Screenshots from: Alexander Soukorov: Francofonia, 2015, (c, d): Corneille de Lyon (workshop): Portrait of Clément Marot, Paris, Louvre, ca. 1550, and Unknown sixteenth Century Painter: Portrait of a Couple, Paris, Louvre������������������������������������������������������   92 Fig. 2 Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn: The Night Watch, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1642���������������������������������������������������������   97 Fig. 3 (a–c) Screenshots from Jean-Luc Godard: Passion, 1982�������������������   99 Fig. 4 Screenshot from Jean-Luc Godard: Passion, 1982������������������������������  100 Fig. 5 (a, b) Screenshot from Jean-Luc Godard: Passion, 1982��������������������  101 Fig. 6 (a) Signet of the film Europa by Lars von Trier, 1991, (b) Saul Bass: Film poster for Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo, 1959���������  104 Fig. 1 Screenshot from: Lars von Trier: Forbrydelsens element (1984)��������  111 Fig. 2 Screenshot from: Lars von Trier: Forbrydelsens element (1984)��������  112 Fig. 3 Screenshot from: Lars von Trier: Europa (1991)���������������������������������  113 Fig. 4 Screenshot from: Lars von Trier: Epidemic (1987)�����������������������������  114

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Part I Europe in Upheaval. Identity in Politics, Literature and Film

Europe Is Everywhere: Introductory Thoughts Michaela Nicole Raß and Kay Wolfinger

Talking about Europe from a cultural studies perspective also means talking about Europe in upheaval, and in this anthology we observe this upheaval in contemporary literature and film. In literary texts, films and comics, Europe is portrayed as being in crisis. Again and again, an upheaval, a fundamental change of the status quo, of the EU, of the European states is depicted. Two interrelated foci can be identified here: On the one hand, artists imagine a shift to the right in one of the nation states that is a member of the EU. The strengthening of nationalism would lead to an erosion of democracy and a process of disintegration of the EU through a disintegration of one of the nation states. The possibility of Marine Le Pen being elected has been addressed, for example, in the comic series La Presidente, the film Chez Nous and the novel Le Bloc by Jérôme Leroy. The disintegration of the EU as a result of Brexit and the isolation and disruption of Britain through an exit from the EU have also been addressed in many different media. In these texts, most of which are pro-EU in tenor, Europe and the EU are equally portrayed as endangered, the political situation as precarious. Not only possible trouble spots are pointed out, but serious changes, upheavals, radical changes are described. The impression that Europe and the EU are equally in a state of upheaval has been increasingly reinforced since 2016. The number of texts describing upheaval and its consequences seems to increase with each passing day. Writers, comic artists and filmmakers thus react directly like seismographs to political upheavals and political crises, mostly creating dystopias. Art reacts on the one hand to the politics of the day, and on the other hand to the tradition of creating different images and concepts of Europe. As literary and media scholars, we naturally focus first on the newly published literary texts, films and comics. But since we had the idea of an interdisciplinary M. N. Raß (*) · K. Wolfinger Institut für Deutsche Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_1

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approach and wanted to bring scholars from as many different research fields as possible into conversation with each other, we increasingly looked at politics not only through art, but also from the perspective of political science, history, or sociology. In the meantime, art and science are working on the same questions and fears. In 2003, Colin Crouch stated in an essay that we were living in a post-democracy and formulated the thesis that democratic institutions would continue to exist, but would only function formally due to disenchantment with politics, social cuts and privatisation. At the time, the polemical tone of his text could not be ignored. But currently, more serious tones are being struck. Yascha Mounk, a political scientist at Harvard University, warns in his publication of the same name of a disintegration of democracy. Other Harvard University professors, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, use many examples and a look at current events, including those in Europe, to describe how democracies are dying. And Timothy Snyder again traces Europe’s path to unfreedom. But in addition to the talk of a disintegration of democracy, the word fascism is increasingly used in art as well as in theory. Here we can only refer to the current publication of the same name by Madeleine Albright as an example. And in Italy, too, a text by the Italian writer Michela Murgia with the provocative title Instruzioni per diventare fascisti was published recently. These few examples illustrate that not only artists but also scholars see the danger of an erosion of democracy through populism. They too address the fascination with fascism and nationalism and invoke the danger posed by the rise of democratically elected yet increasingly autocratic politicians – not only within Europe – and a disintegration of the EU. We hope that this increasing differentiation will also be reflected in this volume, in that not only artistic texts will be considered, but Europe will also be discussed in other textual forms and in different discourses, whether cultural studies, political science, or history. In the course of the last few years, not only the state structure of the EU has changed due to Brexit, but also the political discourse on Europe. The aim of our book is to trace these changes, which have become visible in the political field through election results and referendums, through the crisis of the euro, through conflicts in the area of refugee policy or through separatism in various member states, in the cultural field. On the one hand, traditions of the discourse on Europe that have developed since the intensification and enlargement phase of the European integration process from 1985 onwards and have since established a continuity in literary history are to be highlighted. On the other hand, the continuation, criticism and departure from these traditions as well as the development of new approaches in contemporary film and literature are to be examined. In doing so, we will also reflect on the extent to which talk of a crisis in Europe or European integration can be perceived as a threshold phenomenon in the fields of literature and film. In historical retrospect, it can be observed that it is precisely in moments of destabilisation, upheaval and crisis that the intensity of the discourse on Europe has intensified and gained in complexity. One of our basic theses is that this can be increasingly observed in literary and cinematic texts following the political changes of the 1980s, which is why

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developments of the last 40 years or so, in the two decades before and after the turn of the millennium, will be brought into focus. Texts of contemporary culture will therefore also be examined for alternative manifestations of the discourse on Europe and an increased (poetologically reflected) awareness of the problem. The essays of the contributors also address the question of the extent to which Europe as a basic concept can be understood not only as decisive “for grasping the emergence of the modern world” (Eggel), but also the present constitution of the world. When analyzing the discourse on Europe, four levels of reference can be distinguished, which are thematized in the literature and film of the twentieth century and the present: 1. Europe as an idea, concept, image, cultural conception 2. Europe as an identity-forming entity 3. Europe as a political construct 4. Europe as utopia or dystopia

1 Europe as an Idea, Concept, Image, Cultural Conception Under this heading we understand the rules of forming a concept, an idea, an image and a cultural unity of Europe. Europe is used as a term of order not only in literary and cultural studies whenever there is talk of ‘European literature’ and ‘European culture’, but also to refer to a genuinely ‘European canon’ of literary works, motifs, figures and the like, but also artists. The question of classification is of central importance for the development of a concept of order. The rules for this classification are based on an idea of what ‘Europe’ actually is. This idea can be fed by a mythopoetics that not only points to possibilities of staging and transferring the myth of Europe and of Europe as a figure of reflection, for example the connection between femininity and violence, but also questions the mechanisms and procedures of politicizing the concept of myth. Writers such as Heiner Müller, Friederike Mayröcker, Durs Grünbein, Simon Armitage, Zsuzsanna Gahse, Derek Walcott and Karin Harrasser deal with the figure of Europe in poems and prose texts in various contexts. The myth of the theft of Europe also influences the pictorial representation of Europe or of the European. Films such as The Abduction of Europe (Die Entführung Europas) (1988) ask – sometimes with recourse to representational traditions of the visual arts – about the possibilities of visualizing and illustrating the specifically ‘European’ and about the diversity of the image and idea of Europe that is formed in society as well as in politics. Feature films such as those in Lars von Trier’s Europa trilogy – The Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1987), Europa (1991) – or Club Europa (2017), as well as documentaries such as Europa – The Prey  – Europe Under Pressure (Ein Kontinent als Beute) (2016), also combine political satire, social analysis, historical images and the examination of national and supranational European identity.

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In a cultural conception of Europe, such strategies of grasping and concretizing Europe as an idea, concept or image are related to each other in order to create and delimit a concept of culture or a cultural space or to define characteristic features of ‘European culture’. Transculturality and interregionality are characteristics that are intended to create uniformity and facilitate definition. The demarcation from the non-European is particularly addressed in the description of cross-border travel routes and travel experiences, for example by Ilija Trojanow.

2 Europe as an Identity-Forming Entity The question of a European identity – even against the backdrop of friction between different national identities – is posed by writers such as Hans Magnus Enzensberger in his collection of essays Ach Europa! (Oh Europe!) (1987), Yoko Tawada in her stories and poems in Wo Europa anfängt (1991), Tim Parks in his novel Europa (1997), Esmahan Aykol in his novel Hotel Bosporus (2003), Selim Özdogan in Im Juli (2000) and Fatih Akin in his film of the same name. The search for a European identity not only calls national identities into question, for example in the sense of abandoning a national identity in favour of a supranational European identity, but is also addressed in the context of the problem of migration. Authors and filmmakers who take up the theme of migration often also depict processes of appropriation of a European identity, which also necessitates a preoccupation with the question of the ‘non-European’. The relationship to the Other, the confrontation with national or cultural alterity, in turn often results in the definition of a European identity and culture. This can also be seen in literary texts written in a European language by an author born in a non-European country, such as Rafik Shami, which often attempt to describe typical features of everyday life defined as European and the adoption of a European identity.

3 Europe as a Political Construct In the last four decades, writings critical of the EU by writers such as Hans Magnus Enzensberger have consolidated topoi and motifs that are reproduced in political essays as well as narrative texts. This is connected to processes of development and consolidation of this critique (democratic deficit, hypertrophic bureaucratization, uniformization of everyday life, excessive remuneration of politicians, lobbyism, etc.) and the formation of literary and film historical traditions in the discussion of the EU. If one examines the processes of the formation of such traditions, the question also arises as to the social and political role of intellectuals or the relevance of the voice of writers and filmmakers in past and present political discourse. This is also accompanied by the break with the tradition of EU criticism that, for example, writers such as Robert Menasse have made in recent years. He combines the demand for a supranational or post-national European identity with the representation of Europe as a political construct, both in novels such as Die Hauptstadt

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(The Capital) (2017) and in political essays such as The European Courier (Der europäische Landbote) (2012). In this context, it is possible to ask in what ways these texts contour possibilities of European unity and supranational ‘fraternisation’, as well as the production of a European nation or a European democracy in which the citizens of Europe, rather than nation-states, are sovereign. The question of Europe’s cultural and territorial borders is not only raised anew with each definition and enlargement of the EU, but also in films such as Manhunt: Escape to the Carpathians (Zielfahnder – Flucht in die Karpaten) (2016). The representation of Europe as a political construct is thus in focus.

4 Europe as Utopia or Dystopia For utopias and dystopias that describe Europe as a cultural or political construct, on the other hand, it is characteristic that, on the one hand, they reflect the current status quo and, on the other hand, outline possible further developments of European democracy and a political union, a European state or another form of European institutional constitution, thus also critically questioning the European legacy of the Enlightenment. In addition to texts that develop a common social and political model of society, one also finds texts that deal with the consequences of a disintegration or destruction of the model of European unity. Michel Houellebecq, for example, traces the disintegration of a European identity in France in the novel Soumission (2015). In their three comic volumes La Présidente (2015/2016/2017), the authors François Durpaire and Laurent Muller and the cartoonist Farid Boudjellalim address a turning away from Europe through re-nationalisation and populist parcelling, through xenophobic, anti-pluralist arguments. Director Lucas Belvaux undertakes something comparable in his feature film Chez nous (2017). The vision of a break-up of the EU is also illustrated by the director Annalisa Piras in her film Great European Disaster Movie (2015). In the dystopia Die Arbeit der Nacht (The Work of the Night, 2006), Thomas Glavinic sketches a journey through a Europe devoid of people, while Juli Zeh depicts a Germany forgotten by Europe in her novel Leere Herzen (2017). Martin Walker, on the other hand, paints a picture of Germany’s European spirit and supremacy within the EU in his utopia Germany 2064. Tom Hillenbrand, on the other hand, describes the EU as a total surveillance state in his dystopia Drohnenland (2014). In various media, Europe is discussed as a political construct in the field of tension between regionalisation, nationalisation, continentalisation and globalisation, but also between centre and periphery, and the failure of the EU as an integration project is demonstrated. In addition, the question of the possibilities of a presence or a representation of the political body of a state construct – be it a nation-state or a European state – is often raised, thus addressing the current crisis of the will to constitute and represent a largely united European or nation-state ‘people’ and ‘popular will’. This section of the conference will also explore the connection between demands of the women’s movement and a crisis of the male image

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expressed in populist demands for authoritarian, male-coded structures, militarism and nationalism.

5 As Long as It’s Still Standing… Regarding the genesis of this conference volume, it can be stated that a few years ago we immediately convinced each other of the idea of developing a joint conference concept. Europe as such a vague and broad, but somehow also concrete point of reference was quickly found. We used the broadness of the topic as an opportunity for discourse. To illustrate the discourse on Europe, it is sometimes worth taking a look at pop history. The title Besuchen Sie Europa. Solange es noch steht (1983) by the band Geier Sturzflug: Wenn im Canale Grande U-Boote vor Anker gehn, und auf dem Petersplatz in Rom Raketenabschußrampen stehn, überm Basar von Ankara ein Bombenteppich schwebt, und aus den Hügeln des Olymp sich eine Pershing 2 erhebt. Dann ist alles längst zu spät, dann ist, wenn schon nichts mehr geht, besuchen Sie Europa, solange es noch steht. Vor dem alten Kölner Dom steigt ein Atompilz in die Luft, und der Himmel ist erfüllt von Neutronenwaffenduft, wenn in Paris der Eiffelturm zum letzten Gruß sich westwärts neigt, und in der Nähe von Big Ben sich zartes Alpenglühen zeigt. When submarines drop anchor in the Grand Canal, and there are rocket launchers in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, a carpet of bombs hangs over the bazaar of Ankara, and out of the hills of Olympus rises a Pershing 2. By then, it’s all too late, is when nothing else works, visit Europe, while it’s still standing. A mushroom cloud rises into the air in front of the old Cologne Cathedral, and the sky is filled with the scent of neutron weapons, when in Paris the Eiffel Tower bends westward for its final salute, and near Big Ben, there’s a soft alpenglow. It is not so much the breaking off of the European tradition that is lamented, the cutting of the lines of connection to the Occident, but rather the latent militarization of the continent. Thus, within the logic of the song, it would not be a problem, for example, if in St. Peter’s Square in Rome, and not in the Vatican, as it says in the

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song, the Imitatio Christi were no longer at the centre, or the breaking off of the Christian doctrinal tradition; nor are the cracks in the educational tradition and in cultural monuments lamented, but rather the Cold War in Europe. But we can see that Europe is still standing today and will still stand in decades to come, even after further shocks, although the ideas about Europe are highly disparate. Let an anecdote be told about the cultural transformation of Europe. Recently one was tourist in Vienna, where one could experience Europe in a special form. In August, Vienna was completely crowded with tourists from all over the world, dominantly exhibiting its own European tradition. During a taxi ride one could see the European cultural sites passing by, the Vienna Opera, the House of the Vienna Secession, the many museums and historical sites. Vienna often has strange taxi drivers, this time this one was from Bratislava and embodied as a matter of course a K&K cultural fusion in the best European sense. While driving past a house, however, he pointed out that the Pan-European theorist Richard Coudenhove-Kalergi was born here, and that today’s conservative conceptions of Europe also refer to his idea of a Christian Europe as the Occident. Well, he did not say it in those words, he meant that this gentleman was to blame for the, in his opinion, observable over-­ foreignization – where actually? In Vienna? He did not accept the expressed doubts that the Pan-European idea was not based on an extremely multicultural and heterogeneous Europe. Well, Europe is in trouble on many fronts, and all the more important that the essays collected here address current debates, Brexit, separation fantasies, EU criticism or enthusiasm for Europe.

6 A Celebration… Third and final case history: at the Grand Prix Eurovision de la Chanson, the Europe-­ bonding music festival that has been calling itself the Eurovision Song Contest for a few years now, the now apparently forgotten 2002 contest entry by Spain’s Rosa López read: Europe’s living a celebration. And further in the English translation of the song: Europe’s living a celebration All of us, we’re going to sing Europe’s living a celebration Our dream – a reality How much of this “Celebration” is left, which of course here gives itself as a little-reflected cliché, how much of it should or could be left, this volume will demonstrate. Its structure is as follows: A basis for our reflections will be, above all, the first outline unit of the conference volume: Europe as a (political) construct in the mirror of cultural (and) theory. From his current research Ulrich Brückner shows how or whether one can love Europe, the construction site. – Current constructions of Europe as idea, concept, image, cultural conception, is the title of the second cluster of essays, in which

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Christoph Augustynowicz will present concepts of East-Central Europe and Kay Wolfinger will turn to work on Europe. The third bundle of essays includes Oliver Jahraus’s reflections on empire, the formation of European unity, which Ulrike Zitzlsperger examines in anthologies, and Rüdiger Görner’s plea for the ‘good European’. The film and literary examples that conclude our volume range from Jean-Luc Godard and Lars von Trier in the contributions by Henry Keazor and Stephan Kammer, European documentaries (Johannes Wende) to Hans Pleschinski’s novel Brabant (Michael Braun), Schimmelbusch’s novel Hochdeutschland and various novels and films on the subject of Brexit (Michaela Nicole Raß). We would like to thank all contributors for their willingness to discuss and concretize this important, neuralgic, but also overloaded topic. Our thanks go above all to Heinrich Meier and Gudrun Kresnik of the Carl Friedrich von Siemens Foundation for their cooperation in the run-up to the conference and for their hospitality at the Schlossrondell, to the assistants Laura Laabs and Patryk Maciejewski for their reliable support in the organization and for the conference report, and to Ute Hechtfischer of Metzler Verlag for her prudent and, as always, wise supervision of the publication project. The aim of this volume is also to sound out a field in order to be able to continue to build on it, and one can already look forward to follow-up applications and follow-­up projects. Even as the questions become pressing: Is leaving the EU only a symbolic step? Does one continue to see oneself as part of Europe? And can one even choose what one sees oneself as? Let us therefore set out to survey the European cultural landscape and counter the negative visions of Europe with a positive image of Europe, the vision of a culturally strong draft Europe. In 2017, journalist and writer Simon Strauß co-founded the aforementioned Arbeit an Europa association, a group of young intellectuals thinking about Europe from a cultural perspective. The website states: The idea of the Community seems to be losing its power of persuasion. We are experiencing this not least as a result of the continuing doubts about the European Union, which have almost become permanent. The fact that the European spirit is also suffering as a result will not remain without consequences. The more we experience Europe merely as an administrative and economic institution, the further we move away from its cultural core. That is why it is more important than ever for us to ask: What can Europe mean? What ideas are behind it, what stories have been told about it, what meaning can it create? And what is at stake if we abandon the effort to approach its essence?

We are hereby joining forces and not giving up, but concentrating on the Europe in upheaval, in order to also see in the upheaval the moment of a creation of meaning.

Part II Europe as a (Political) Construct in Light of Culture (and) Theory

The House of Europe On the Difficulty of Loving a Construction Site That Remains a Construction Site Ulrich Brückner

1 The House of Europe (as a Political Construct) The image of the “House of Europe” has been part of the metaphorical vocabulary for thinking and talking about Europe since the CSCE negotiations of the 1970s and was further popularized in the 1980s with Mikhail Gorbachev.1 Thus, not only does it fit within this anthology’s temporal focus, it is suitable for illustrating characteristics of the European integration process as it is a natural starting point for a discussion of the questions posed to Europe from a political science perspective. When we speak of building the European house together, the image emphasizes the changeability and the open-ended nature of the European project. This is constitutive for European integration insofar as its political system, unlike in the case of states, is understood as explicitly unfinished and in permanent need of reform. In Article 49 of the Lisbon Treaty, the European Communities (EC) and later the European Union (EU) invite European states to become members of the Community without defining what a European state is and what the finalité politique should be. There are principles, values and rules, but no blueprint. The project is not even geographically fixed, as Turkey’s candidate status prominently illustrates. The model of unity in diversity refers to the tension between the community compatibility of national actions and subsidiarity, as the Union may not undertake too far-reaching centralisation at the expense of state and sub-state decision-making levels. All participants in the construction of the European house are invited to  Domnitz, Christian: Zwischen Untergrund und Parteidiktion, Transfer und Aneignung von Europanarrativen im sozialistischen Ostmitteleuropa 1975–1989, in: Frank Bösch, Ariane Brill und Florian Greiner (eds.): Europabilder im 20. Jahrhundert: Emergence on the Periphery, Series: Contemporary History; vol. 5. Göttingen: Wallstein 2012, p. 271. 1

U. Brückner (*) Stanford University in Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_2

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contribute their ideas of Europe, and theoretically all models exist side by side on equal footing. Perspectives compete on both the direction of European integration and the speed at which reform occurs. Occasionally the builders reflect on what has been achieved and lay side by side the ideas of how things could and should continue. In 2017, then President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker initiated such a debate with the White Paper on the Future of Europe2 outlining five possible scenarios for the future of Europe. Instead of prescribing a path from above, this could be seen as an attempt to acknowledge diversity, to examine the advantages and disadvantages of all the visions represented politically, and to initiate a collective discourse to reach an agreement on how Europe should move on – a process that continues under his successor Ursula von der Leyen.3 European integration has been designed as a dynamic process from the very beginning. This applies to both the enlargements and the consolidations, which are concerned with the reorganisation of the distribution of competences and the provision of means of control for the European decision-making level. Against this background, “Europe in upheaval” is not the exception but the rule. Change is the programme. New members are not forced to participate or even colonized, but decide voluntarily for a place in the cultural sphere of Europe and choose to belong to the economic, legal and political community as a modernization strategy. In this sense, the House of Europe is understood not only as a community of purpose but as a space with cultural content. Evidence of this can be found in the image of the “return to Europe”. This slogan emerged in Central and Eastern Europe political speeches following the fall of the Iron Curtain, referring to the forced separation from one’s own democratic, social and economic traditions. There is strength in the incompleteness of the European house. One can hope that the construction will meet one’s expectations. One is not confronted with a reality that is entirely disagreeable to one’s own ideas.4 This hope exists above all in times of departure and when new goals are announced, such as the completion of the internal market, monetary union, enlargement to the East. Such goals were simultaneously visionary and, sufficiently unspecific to avoid a discussion about distribution of competencies and responsibilities. In this way, the unfinished European house allows the process to react more flexibly to challenges and to adapt permanently. For Central and Eastern European states the primary goal was to restore the sovereign nation-state and not, as in the Western European founding narrative, to

 European Commission: White Paper on the Future of Europe, 5 possible scenarios Brussels, COM (2017) 2025, 1 March 2017, URL: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/ weissbuch_zur_zukunft_europas_de.pdf (last accessed 06.06.2020). 3  URL: https://ec.europa.eu/info/publications/commissions-contribution-shaping-conferencefuture-­europe_de (last accessed 06/06/2020). 4  Although for one group, Brexit seems to be precisely the reason why they want to leave the EU, because they no longer see any chance of the EU coming any closer to their preferred image of Europe. 2

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overcome nationalism. The renunciation of an explicit commitment to a future European state was a necessary condition for wanting to become members. It was not a matter of transforming the regained state autonomy into an abstract participation in an interconnected multi-level system. Instead EU membership was seen as a tool to strengthen the nation-state by gaining status, transfers and all the other public goods that the EU promised – or at least was expected to deliver. Where such an objective is lacking or the consequences of the process to date are perceived as inadequate, the unfinished – the building site of Europe – increasingly becomes a disadvantage. Europe in its political form as the EU cannot be grasped. It is intransparent, inefficient and ineffective. It is not self-explanatory and is constantly changing its structure and distribution of competences, the number of members is growing, its personnel is largely unknown, its bureaucratic and technocratic constitution raises questions regarding democratic deficits, it is slow to make decisions, and the compromises reached are often incomprehensible or inappropriate to the problem they are supposed to solve. Even after decades of European integration, media struggle to explain the EU’s special institutions and how they interact. And there is correspondingly little general interest in trying to understand it. When 27 states negotiate a common solution to an issue, the answer is usually a mixture from different national systems. Such a mixture, in which many states contribute, is more likely to find a majority than the adoption of one state’s model as a blueprint. Mixed solutions, however, require an even broader understanding of how national systems work in order to be able to judge what to make of the common solution. At the same time, higher standards are often applied when evaluating decisions at the European rather than the national level. Even in this brief sketch of the self-image and characteristics of Europe in its political form, the European Union, differences to its member nation states become evident. Despite all state transformations and forms of social change, states emphasize the finished, the static – not the process. The same applies to the state territory and the state people. Neither is constitutive of the House of Europe and cannot be, as it does not exist. The processual nature of European integration goes hand in hand with greater flexibility and adaptability to respond to changing priorities and challenges. Particularly in the constructive imbalances of European compromises, there were often built-in needs for reform for which there were no majorities at the time of the compromise. Conversely, constant change makes it difficult to understand what Europe is, how it works, what it does and does not do. Without such an understanding, however, there is a lack of acceptance for the political system. And without sufficient acceptance, a problem of legitimacy arises which, in extreme cases, leads to failure. Another problem for the identification with the construction site stems from the fact that, if the EU is not a state and is not intended to take the place of the sovereign member states. Therefore, its resource endowment to solve problems is not always sufficient. The same applies to crisis prevention. If the impression arises that the

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European house does not function properly or has deficiencies with regard to legitimacy, efficiency, effectiveness and distributive justice, the problem of acceptance is reinforced. And finally, the EU’s non-self-explanatory construction site allows members to stage Europe as a scapegoat: What goes well is the merit of national governments, what does not work or works badly is the EU’s fault. This relationship between the Union and its members is also well known and documented. In his Europäischen Landboten (The European Courier) (2012),5 Menasse goes so far as to see this as the real problem of the European crisis. The national house with supposedly clearly defined walls and inhabitants functioning as a space of experience, history, language and culture that provides orientation is confronted with a permanent construction site whose incompleteness and mutability, promises either life opportunities and is welcomed accordingly, or whose constant change and unpredictability causes anxiety and demands adjustments. In addition, the costs of the European house are more difficult to communicate. Any lack of acceptance for unpopular decisions endangers the project, which until recently only knew fair weather phases, but whose functioning is now perceived above all as cold, distant and incomprehensible and is also talked and written about in this way.

2 Europe After the Establishment of the EC and During the Period 1980–2020 The end of the Cold War and the possibility of reunification of the divided continent coincided with a further round of deepening of the Western-style European Community. With the planned completion of the European single market and its culmination in the introduction of a common currency and the start of a common foreign and security policy and cooperation in the field of home affairs and justice, the Community became a political union. This qualitative step was expressed in the transition to the name “European Union” and the open acknowledgement that it is a political union and not merely an economic community of convenience. The project began with the – Western – teleological founding narrative of peace, freedom, prosperity, stability, the overcoming of nationalism and the exemplary character of Franco-German reconciliation, which also feeds the dynamics of the integration process. With the enlargements of the EU, new images and interests are added to the definition of what the project should be. This becomes a challenge for Europe as an identity-forming entity, because there is no longer only a ladder narrative that claimed validity from the founding of the EC until the 1990s. At the beginning of the reunification of the divided continent, there were no competing images of Europe in West and East. People had other concerns and hopes  Menasse, Robert: Der europäische Landbote, Die Wut der Bürger und der Friede Europas. Vienna: Zsolnay 2012. 5

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than thinking about basic questions of European integration. Just as there were hardly any concrete ideas in East Germany about what a united Germany could and should look like, there were no politically effective visions of a united Europe east of the Iron Curtain. Accordingly, German and European unification took place as an extension of the Western political, legal and economic system to the new members. The “rules for defining what the concept of Europe encompasses” – as the invitation to the “Europe in Upheaval” conference puts it – are not rigid in the case of membership in the EU. They have existed since 1993 in the form of the “Copenhagen Criteria”,6 in which the EU signals to future members which conditions must be fulfilled politically, economically and legally in order to be accepted. The interpretation and application of the criteria change in the course of accession negotiations and in response to domestic, European and global developments and challenges. In the political competition between competing narratives, the distribution of power and the possibilities for shaping it shift, as does the question of which new rules are set and how the old ones are interpreted or adhered to. As already explained for the incompleteness of the European house, this also has consequences for problem-solving capacity and resilience, i.e. the ability to withstand future crises. It also has consequences for the acceptance of the integration project. However, it is not only Europe-specific factors that influence the perception and acceptance of the European project. Without going into detail, some examples can be mentioned: • The beginning of globalization, growing cross-border division of labor and interdependence. • The replacement of the real economy by the financial economy. • A trend towards optimization and efficiency with the consequence of the economization of all lifeworlds. • Technological innovations, changes in communication, easier access to information and an increased level of education and willingness to engage in lifelong learning. • Increasing mobility and, as a consequence, the emergence of a cosmopolitan social class. • Democracy before and after the internet. • An increased demand for participation and a rejection of paternalistic politics. • A declining weight of Europe in the world. • The rise of new powers and their advocacy of policy models other than Europe’s preferred model of multilateralism and universal human rights. Part of the fair-weather event here is that one could operate independently and invoke the motto “unity in diversity” as long as unity was not overly challenged by diversity and as long as there were no serious attacks on the self-image. With the  URL: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/accession_criteria_copenhague.html?locale= en (last accessed 06.06.2020). 6

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discussion about Turkey’s accession and the open and covert attacks against the image of the open society in Europe, the tacit acceptance of this self-image reached its limits. A need arose to stand up for something and at the same time to reject what endangers this model of society. This is new for EU citizens who have never taken to the streets in support of Europe, but are now doing so as Pulse of Europe, Remainers or the #indivisible movement.

3 Images of Europe in Literature and the Discourses of National and European Publics The construction of the European house has been an elite project until the recent past. A small circle negotiated in secret and only informed the national publics about the outcome. The foundations were firstly a permissive consensus that the positive narrative of European integration was good and right. Second, that the external pressure of the bipolar system during the Cold War encouraged a unification, and third, that the project was sufficient to create institutions, balance interests and gradually Europeanise public tasks. Whether a sufficient number of Europeans would live in the emerging European house was not seen as a crucial question for the integration process. The optimistic expectation was that as integration progressed, loyalties would shift from the nation-state to the European decision-­making level, or at least that a wider circle of concentric identities would emerge and consolidate. The fair-weather process of European integration has not been seriously challenged, even though there have always been crises, so that the history of integration can be told along successive crises.7 But these crises had a lower intensity and also a different quality than the current ones in that they did not challenge the integration project per se. They were about questions of distribution and direction; conflicts were fought out within the system and on the basis of the collectively shared conviction that the integration project was fundamentally right and in the interests of all its members and their citizens. Instead of a discourse on images of Europe, it was and still is more exciting to deal with questions within the traditional reference systems and mostly national and non-European cultural spaces: who are we, who or what do we want to be or become? For this, there is promotion, producers, distribution channels, a market and a supply that creates its own demand, something that was dramatically underestimated by the founders of European integration theories. They anticipated the construction of the European house would be accompanied by a shift in loyalties,

 Kühnhardt, Ludger: European Integration: Challenge and Response. Crises as Engines of Progress in European Integration History. Bonn: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Discussion Paper C157, Center for European Integration Studies 2006. 7

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however, instead of making the nation state obsolete, the EU helped to save the nation state.8 If this description is correct, it partly explains the relative absence of images of Europe in literature and film and why it does not play a significant role in the political sphere either. The few instances of literature and film dealing with images of Europe reach, at best, an intellectual elite. The generations of politicians from Adenauer, Spaak and de Gaulle to Kohl, Delors and Mitterrand base their image of Europe on their own experience of war or their proximity to it and a strong belief in Western democracy and market economy. All of them were committed to their respective national demos. The image of Europe in mass media is different. In Great Britain, for example, Europe is not an occasional topic of a small, educated cosmopolitan elite, but a perennial issue especially in tabloids. “Brussels” serves as a permanently available scapegoat and source of exasperation over absurd decisions, overregulation, attacks on national characteristics and achievements, or the embodiment of super-­ bureaucracy and waste. Long before “fake news”, the truth content plays a subordinate role, as long as the “news” generates attention and serves stereotypes.9 The exaggeration of the negative is facilitated by the exaggeration of the positive, as expressed in the EU’s self-image.10 This gives rise to a camp formation, as manifested particularly impressively in the Brexit dispute in the (still) United Kingdom, where characteristics of religious wars can be identified.11 The confrontational image of Europe in its binary appearances (solution/problem, good/evil, ability to act/loss of control) is anything but differentiated or theoretically grounded. This is not only due to the communicative technique of a populist political style, but also illustrates the declining role of the intellectual in discourse and changes in the poetological impact: Whereas in the past there was a Europe of elites that were comparatively more culturally homogeneous, today we are dealing with far more differentiated societies that do not rely on an elite and either push for more participation and acceptance of their divergent ideas or are fundamentally hostile to elites and speak out for a populist alternative model. Rare exceptions for intellectuals who deal with a political image of Europe in literature are Robert Menasse, Hans-Magnus Enzensberger or Michel Houellebecq. They develop topoi of European criticism and go beyond them by switching from fictional literature to political action and proclaiming a European Republic12 or

 Milward, Alan S.: The European Rescue of the Nation State. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. 9  Cross, Mai’a K. Davis/Ma, Xinru: EU crises and integrational panic: the role of the media, in: Journal of European Public Policy, 22 (2015), H. 8, pp. 1053–1070. 10  Patel, Kiran Klaus: Projekt Europa. Munich: C. H. Beck 2018. 11  Bunbacher, Beat: Grossbritannien droht im Glaubenskrieg zu versinken, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (26.07.2019). 12  Guérot, Ulrike/Humer, Verena/Menasse, Robert/Rau, Milo (eds.): The European Balcony Project: The Emancipation of the European Citizens, Theater der Zeit, 2020. 8

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fabulating about the decline of Europe as a theme park for the Asian middle class13 or submission14 to Sharia law.

4 The Image of Europe in Literature: The EU as an Administered Reality Without Sex Appeal or Mobilisation Potential In his award-winning novel Die Hauptstadt (The Capital),15 Robert Menasse paints a picture of the European Commission as a self-referential bureaucracy. This does not read as a specific criticism of the EU institutions or their officials, but rather as representative of the project itself. Europe does not follow its ideals, but is shaped above all by the logics of action of civil servants who act no less humanly than the actors in Robert Musil’s Mann ohne Eigenschaften (The Man Without Qualities)16 did in the century before when preparing the “Parallel Action”. Bureaucrats pursue self-interest and show no sense for the context and the bigger picture. Their actions endanger democracy and community cohesion and offer little worth identifying with. Rather, what the book describes is repulsive, and even educated, reflective readers develop animosities towards the EU and its bureaucracy. The fact that national bureaucracies hardly function any different and do not offer better means of identification is irrelevant. The imperfections of the nation state are more easily forgiven than those of an idealised European project. Menasse is praised by the reviewer Carsten Otte: “even if the thoroughly necessary confetti character of the novel, which is peppered with many theses and antitheses, should exhaust us, we are rewarded with the realisation that the European bureaucracy is not only capable of literature but, despite all its criticism, is also a living system that cares about people and its historical mission”.17 However, this only appears to be praise because the EU is not expected to care and rather to do worse. Long before Menasse, Hans-Magnus Enzensberger embarked on a European journey west of the Iron Curtain for his book Ach Europa!18 and presented an anthology that focusses on conditions that in part belong to the romanticized picture of longing that many critics of contemporary Europe share. Those who trust less in the future than on a supposedly better past would like to see them return to: The states of (Western) Europe  – above all the dreadful Sweden  – are described as boring, slow, over-regulating welfare states. The tone and the blanket criticism of

 Houellebecq, Michel: Karte und Gebiet. Cologne: DuMont 2011.  Houellebecq, Michel: Unterwerfung. Köln: DuMont 2015. 15  Menasse, Robert: Die Hauptstadt. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 2017. 16  Musil, Robert: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Hamburg: Rowohlt 2013. 17  Otte, Carsten: Deutscher Buchpreis für “Die Hauptstadt” – Die richtige Wahl, in: Die Tageszeitung (18.09.2017). 18  Enzensberger, Hans Magnus: Ach Europa! Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Hans Magnus: Ach Europa! Frankfurt a.M. 1987. 13 14

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paternalism resemble that of the “soft monster Brussels”19 with its inefficient compromise machinery and the regulatory bullying of citizens in nation states that are actually more or less capable and that would somehow be better off without Europe. This EU technocracy works, but it is distant, inaccessible, slow, difficult to understand, and comes at the expense of individual freedom and the ability to shape politics. Because of its remoteness from citizens, its cold heart of a functional community of purpose and its tendency towards centralisation and standardisation, it poses a cultural threat to the European diversity of a multi-layered everyday life. Unlike today’s fundamental critics – who would prefer to abolish the EU or at least leave it – such an image of Europe in Enzensberger’s work appears more as the joy of criticism and intellectual play with the interpretation of what is presented as reality. Books like his scratch at the beautiful image of a united Europe that promises peace, freedom, prosperity and stability, without thinking about costs beyond the periodically revived net contributor debate, which may temporarily trigger excitement about factual or supposed injustices, but is then forgotten again as long as no direct reference to the personal everyday life is recognized or constructed. Images of Europe that look at Europe and the EU from the outside are even more undifferentiated and selective in their emphasis on individual aspects that favour their own arguments. Without meaning it satirically, the preferred stylistic device is exaggeration and one-sided overacting. This works via whitewashing in books like Jeremy Rifkin’s European Dream20 or Elisabeth Pond’s The Hour of Europe. Europe on the Way to World Power21 as well as in Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam22or James Kirchick’s The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age,23 and it smells above all of sales strategy: Only exaggeration makes it interesting. The situation is different when an image of Europe is not merely the expression of a political fashion or seismographically and intellectually ambitious in tracing the state of a cultural area and offering insights, but when an image of Europe becomes part of a political strategy. All the above-mentioned imperfections of the construction site of Europe, its institutional weaknesses and inability to fulfill expectations, can also be politically instrumentalised in order to construct a counter-model with the help of which an illiberal, nationalist alternative pursues its goals of a change of system, relying on

 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus: Sanftes Monster Brüssel oder die Entmündigung Europas, Suhrkamp 2011. 20  Rifkin, Jeremy: Der europäische Traum, Die Vision einer quiet Supermacht. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus 2004. 21  Pond, Elizabeth: Die Stunde Europas: ein Kontinent auf dem Weg zur Weltmacht. Berlin: Propyläen 2000. 22  Murray, Douglas: The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. London: Bloomsbury Continuum 2017. 23  Kirchick, James: The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. New Haven: Yale University Press 2017. 19

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emotion to exploit the weaknesses that the European house possesses vis-à-vis the nation state. Such a fundamental critique of the traditional image of Europe and political reality can also be beneficial to a pluralist democracy, because it forces weaknesses to be uncovered and eliminated, even if it appears unsavoury or is painful.

5 Images of Europe Beyond the Traditional The image of Europe is becoming increasingly differentiated, because it reflects developments in the societies of the member states. Moreover, there have always been nationally based images of Europe that have been able to coexist. The West German narrative of Europe celebrated the idea of politics beyond the nation state, in which everyone could continue to be culturally what they were or wanted to become. Europe was more than the sum of its parts, consisting of states with more or less dark pasts. Those on the eastern side of the Iron Curtain returned to the family of respected sovereign states in the name of Europe. On top of that, Europe in its Western post-war form was promising, helpful and good. Founded after WWII it did not have a dark past. This changed with the disappointed expectations of Europe in the series of events since the turn of the millennium that have been labelled crises: The failure of the European Constitutional Treaty in 2005 was followed by the global financial and banking crisis in 2008 with mass unemployment and social dislocation, followed then by the Greek crisis in 2010. Austerity programs directed by the Troika (consisting of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) lead to accusations of a crisis of democracy and legitimacy. The Greek referendum against the EU’s austerity programmes in the summer of 2015 was immediately followed by the migration crisis. Terrorist attacks by the Islamic State created the impression of state failure and a crisis of security in Europe. This was compounded in 2016 by the Brexit referendum, the newly elected US President Trump with his inherent hostility towards Europe, and the EU’s weak foreign policy role in resolving conflicts and in modernising regions in its neighbourhood. Solidarity in times of need was and is expected from the community of values that the EU and its supporters see themselves as. As such the countries on the periphery of the Eurozone as well as the states particularly affected by the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic expect massive financial support and redistribution of European prosperity. The east of the EU and especially the Baltic States expect solidarity in the form of military presence as protection against another Crimea scenario. The main host countries of refugees expect solidarity in the way that all 27 members accept people who have a right to protection and assistance in Europe. NATO expects solidarity in meeting the defense spending target of 2 percent of gross domestic product. Not only the World Climate Conference sees Europe as having an obligation to meet its climate targets. Against this background, an alternative narrative emerges: Europe is no longer primarily an answer to twentieth century problems, a promise of prosperity,

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freedom, peace and stability, its achievements are reinterpreted as part of the problems facing the Union or even as the main cause of the crises. For this image of Europe to become effective, it is not only necessary to have events that can be interpreted in a Eurosceptic way, but also politicians, communication channels such as social media, influential and financially powerful states and companies that have an interest in destabilising the EU, and a corrosion of truth-­ seeking institutions’ credibility such as those responsible for providing factual information and knowledge that are essential for democratic discourse. This applies to quality media in the same way as it does to scientific institutions. But an alternative is not only to be found in Europe as an image of the enemy to be fought in the name of a resurgent nationalism. There are also considerations beyond the dichotomy between European integration as a means to overcome or to save the nation state. In her contribution to the Historikertag 2018 with thoughts on the “spatial turn,” Angelika Epple asks, “How can spaces be determined by relations on the one hand and remain recognizable as specific in each case on the other? Can we start from the dissolution of entities through relations and at the same time hold on to a construction of entities through relations?”24 Applied to Europe and our image of it, this leads to a wealth of questions and possibilities that can be explored and negotiated nowhere better than in art and science – to which this conference volume in particular makes a contribution.

References Bunbacher, Beat: Grossbritannien droht im Glaubenskrieg zu versinken, in: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (26.07.2019). Cross, Mai’a K. Davis/Ma, Xinru: EU crises and integrational panic: the role of the media, in: Journal of European Public Policy, 22 (2015), H. 8, S. 1053–1070. Domnitz, Christian: Zwischen Untergrund und Parteidiktion, Transfer und Aneignung von Europanarrativen im sozialistischen Ostmitteleuropa 1975–1989, in: Frank Bösch, Ariane Brill und Florian Greiner (Hg.): Europabilder im 20. Jahrhundert: Entstehung an der Peripherie, Reihe: Geschichte der Gegenwart; Bd. 5. Göttingen: Wallstein 2012. Enzensberger, Hans Magnus: Ach Europa! Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1987. Enzensberger, Hans Magnus: Sanftes Monster Brüssel oder die Entmündigung Europas, Suhrkamp 2011. Epple, Angelika: Horst Seehofer kriegt die Kurve, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (04.10.2018). Europäische Kommission: Weißbuch zur Zukunft Europas, 5 mögliche Szenarien Brüssel, COM (2017) 2025, 1. März 2017, URL: https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-­political/files/ weissbuch_zur_zukunft_europas_de.pdf (zuletzt abgerufen am 6.6.2020). Guérot, Ulrike/Humer, Verena/Menasse, Robert/Rau, Milo (Hrsg.): The European Balcony Project: The Emancipation of the European Citizens, Theater der Zeit, 2020. Houellebecq, Michel: Karte und Gebiet. Köln: DuMont 2011. Houellebecq, Michel: Unterwerfung. Köln: DuMont 2015.

  Epple, Angelika: Horst Seehofer kriegt die Kurve, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (04.10.2018). 24

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Kirchick, James: The End of Europe: Dictators, Demagogues, and the Coming Dark Age. New Haven: Yale University Press 2017. Kühnhardt, Ludger: European Integration: Challenge and Response. Crises as Engines of Progress in European Integration History. Bonn: Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität, Discussion Paper C157, Zentrum für Europäische Integrationsforschung 2006. Menasse, Robert: Der europäische Landbote, Die Wut der Bürger und der Friede Europas. Wien: Zsolnay 2012. Menasse, Robert: Die Hauptstadt. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 2017. Milward, Alan S.: The European Rescue of the Nation State. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992. Murray, Douglas: The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam. London: Bloomsbury Continuum 2017. Musil, Robert: Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften. Hamburg: Rowohlt 2013. Otte, Carsten: Deutscher Buchpreis für „Die Hauptstadt“ – Die richtige Wahl, in: Die Tageszeitung (18.09.2017). Patel, Kiran Klaus: Projekt Europa. München: C. H. Beck 2018. Pond, Elizabeth: Die Stunde Europas: ein Kontinent auf dem Weg zur Weltmacht. Berlin: Propyläen 2000. Rifkin, Jeremy: Der europäische Traum, Die Vision einer leisen Supermacht. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus 2004.

Part III Europe: A Fiction? Current Constructions of Europe as Idea, Concept, Image, Cultural Conception

Of the Price of Freedom and Walk-in Books Some Remarks on the Concept of East Central Europe in Current Discussions Christoph Augustynowicz

1 Appropriation: Historiographical Definitions After the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989, the discussion about the internal division of Eastern Europe received new impetus.1 In 1992, the historian Piotr Wandycz, born in Poland, educated in France and Great Britain, and, moreover, academically influenced in the United States, published a groundbreaking synthesis entitled The Price of Freedom. A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the Present. His main aim was to convey the region to a US readership that was ignorant of the European continent. Accordingly, interested in contemporary historical and thus immediate references, he emphasized: “The two world wars began in this region, as did the Cold War.”2 In geopolitical terms, Wandycz referred unequivocally to the Europe between West and East, clearly acknowledging the deliberate span and lack of conceptual precision in the discussion between the large, geographically defined East Central Europe on the one hand and the small, politically defined East Central Europe on the other. Consequently, he based his definition of East Central Europe on changing borders, specifically on the political-administrative demarcations of historical epochs. Perhaps it was also the Atlantic perspective that prompted him to take up arguments in favour of a definition based on seas, and thus a concept that was the subject of lively debate in Polish geopolitical and

 Cf. for the following Augustynowicz, Christoph: Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas. Ein Abriss. Vienna: new academic press 2nd ed. 2014, pp. 28–32. 2  Wandycz, Piotr: The Price of Freedom. A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the present. London/New York: Routledge 2nd ed. 2001, p.  1, translation Christoph Augustynowicz. 1

C. Augustynowicz (*) Institute for Eastern European History, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_3

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historiographical circles: According to this, East-Central Europe is the space between the Baltic, Adriatic, Aegean and Black Seas. Particularly against the background of the disappearance of division and a potential new centre in Europe, Wandycz explicitly drew attention to the fact that its division into a West and an East is relatively new: it goes back to the long-term dichotomy of South and North, the discrepancy between the civilised Mediterranean and the barbaric North – even the historian of the Enlightenment August Ludwig Schlözer had explicitly written a Nordic History3 in 1771 and thus also covered the predominantly Slavic-speaking and Orthodox Europe. According to Wandycz, under Soviet dominance, the political necessity of distancing oneself from the East led East-Central European oppositionists to rediscover and reclaim their own position in the centre of Europe. Influencing primarily English- and French-language discourse, they redefined “Central Europe” and thus freed it from its strongly imperial-­aggressive connotation: The concept of Central Europe conceived in 1915 by Friedrich Naumann,4 which aimed at a domination of Poland and Ukraine in particular by the German Reich, played a major role in shaping the idea of a politically and economically German-dominated Central Europe in the long term. One dimension that Wandycz introduced into the discussion on the definition of East Central Europe is the distinction, primarily based on economic history, between centre, semi-periphery and periphery, which goes back to the US historian Immanuel Wallerstein, among others. Wandycz argued these classifications independently of the common West-East dichotomy and thus achieved a further spatial differentiation of East Central Europe on the one hand, and its integration into pan-European patterns on the other. In doing so, he emphasized the necessity of a functional differentiation: If from an economic perspective an assignment to the semi-periphery is suggested for East Central Europe, from a cultural-historical perspective it must be added that central stimuli came from the region: Examples include Hussitism as a proto-reformation a century before Luther in fifteenth-century Bohemia, or concepts of liberalism and constitutionalism in Poland and Hungary in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and thus contemporaneous with the epochal upheavals of the French Revolution. Wandycz emphasized that not having made this differentiation was a central deficit in perception: West and East had all too quickly marked progressiveness and regressiveness and had therefore all too quickly become judgmental terms. Wandycz elaborated the following characteristics for his definition of East Central Europe:

 Schlözer, August Ludwig: Allgemeine Nordische Geschichte. Aus den neuesten und besten Nordischen Schriftstellern und nach eigenen Untersuchungen beschrieben, und als eine Geographische und Historische Einleitung zur richtigen Kenntnis aller Skandinavischen, Finnischen, Slavischen, Lettischen und Sibirischen Völker, besonders in alten und mittleren Zeiten. Halle: Johann Justinus Gebauer 1771. 4  Naumann, Friedrich: Mitteleuropa. Berlin: Georg Reimer 1915. 3

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• Phased cultural development through adaptation of Western models in the tenth century based on Christianization. • Persistence in agrarian structures at the same time as economic developments in the West towards proto-industrial models since the sixteenth century (with the exception of Bohemia). • Discrepancy between socio-economic conditions on the one hand and institutional developments on the other hand, i.e., the development of the elite and the masses apart, lack of a middle class, self-perceived modernization deficit. • Nationality problems due to persistent ethno-religious heterogeneity. • Frequent changes in boundary lines as late as the twentieth century. • Interrupted, discontinuous statehood. • History as part of large, supra-regional and transnational ruling conglomerates with dynastic cohesion, often symbolically exaggerated struggle against foreign domination with simultaneous economic-social distinction of the peasants. • Presence and interaction with local Germans and Jews, formation of centers of Judaism. • Place of concentrated and condensed supra-regional and global history, East Central Europe as a “laboratory in which different systems are tested”.5 Wandycz made his own position and its connection to older positions unmistakably clear: “Bohemia (later Czechoslovakia), Hungary, and Poland belonged to Western civilization.”6 All the great structural upheavals in Western Europe had also shaped East-Central Europe: the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the French and Industrial Revolutions. Since the 1990s, the concept of East-Central Europe has been further differentiated, especially historically, against the background of changed realpolitik conditions and often from an Atlantic distance. A powerful contribution to this discussion was made by Larry Wolff, who, under the title Inventing Eastern Europe, elaborated the thesis already developed by Wandycz, according to which the internal border in Europe changed under the auspices of the Enlightenment in the eighteenth century from one separating North and South to one separating West and East.7 Then, in the 2000s, there is a tendency to see East Central Europe more as one with Southeastern Europe, such as at first glance in A History of Eastern Europe. Crisis and Change by Robert Bideleux and Ian Jeffries;8 however, East Central and South-eastern Europe are explicitly examined separately in this work on closer inspection until the end of the nineteenth century. South-eastern Europe is traced back to the Greco-Roman period, while East-Central Europe is treated in depth from the seventh century onwards – the reference to antiquity is thus elaborated as  Wandycz 2001, p. 10.  Ibid., p. 3. 7  Wolff, Larry: Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1994. 8  Bideleux, Robert/Jeffries, Ian: A History of Eastern Europe. Crisis and Change. London/New York: Routledge 2nd ed. 2007. 5 6

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an essential difference. In the chronologization, conventional epochal boundaries are replaced by the central question of what kind and how pronounced the distance to the West was in the respective period. The space itself, similar to Wandycz, is conceived and presented within the framework of the country associations Austria/ Habsburg monarchy and Poland-Lithuania/Polish territories; much space is given to 1848 and thus to the nation-building process. Only for the twentieth century are East-Central and South-Eastern Europe treated integratively by Bideleux and Jeffries and divided into the interwar period, the post-war period and the period after the fall of communism. In general, a good part of recent synthetic works devotes a great deal of space to the twentieth century and sets a focus on contemporary and present historical themes and references, occasionally also back-projections. The Study Handbook Eastern Europe (Studienhandbuch Östliches Europa) (volume 1), edited by Harald Roth, takes a different approach,9 where the chronological structure is set aside in favour of a thematic-spatial approach. In addition to general considerations on methodological foundations (basic historical concepts, historiography, borders and division, political culture, society, religions and denominations, historical anthropology), the conceived historical regions (East-Central, Southeast, Northeast Europe) are introduced and historically argued. Subsequently, countries, states and regions as well as transnational ethnic and religious groups are treated in detail by specialized authors. This work thus follows a decentralized perspective by explicitly focusing not only on (national) states, but also on small, local spaces, their history(s) and their perspective(s).

2 Rivalry: Literary Claims The concept of (East) Central Europe, however, is borne not only by its historiographical, but also quite substantially by its literary-belletristic application. The historian of Eastern Europe, Karl Schlögel, for example, who is known among other things for his broadly effective formats and who has also dealt in essays and lectures with the eastern demarcation of the centre of Europe since late socialism, referred to the discussion and problematisation of the term by György Konrad (Hungary), Milan Kundera (Czechoslovakia and the Czech Republic) and Czesław Milosz (Poland), for example. Schlögel himself sees above all Prague as the epitome of East Central Europe, while Konrad’s plea for a (re)appropriation of a cultural-­ topographical connection between Budapest and Vienna is unsurprisingly of interest to him. Milan Kundera elaborates the rivalry between a geographically central but politically eastern location on the one hand and a culturally western location on the other, and finds Schlögel’s respect for this.10 Finally, in the case of Czesław  Roth, Harald (ed.): Studienhandbuch Östliches Europa, vol. 1: Geschichte Ostmittel- und Südosteuropas. Cologne/Weimar/Vienna: Böhlau Verlag 2nd ed. 2009; vol. 2 is devoted to the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union respectively. 10  Schlögel, Karl: Die Mitte liegt ostwärts. Europa im Übergang. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 2008, pp. 15–17. 9

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Milosz, his complaint about the asymmetry of perception and familiarity is still convincing today  – his exile in Paris should never be remembered, his home in Vilnius should be remembered constantly, Milosz said. Schlögel interprets Miloszʼ argumentation quite pointedly further: “If Paris were to disappear, it would be something like a second Pompeii or, even more, the disappearance of a good part of our civilization and way of life. The disappearance of Wilna (...) from our horizon would be as un-tragic as reading a newspaper report”.11 Milosz thus leads on to the milieu of the cities and their significance for a primarily literary grasp of the paradigm of East Central Europe. To illustrate this in more detail, we will take another, more recent example of a historian who also works in the field of fiction and literature and discuss it in more detail: In his travel diary examined here, the European historian Wolfgang Schmale nourishes his understanding of Europe primarily from personal memories, with the motif of transformation in the foreground – not only away from fascisms and communism, but also towards the redefinition of the Czech Republic and Slovakia from one another and, above all, from the national re-excesses in former Yugoslavia, which he sees condensed in the assassination of the Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjić in 2003. In spatial terms, the transition to or from Europe via transfer and memory is fundamental for Schmale, that is, the figure of thought of the “regions of transition”.12 The dialogue between remembered, transitional Europe on the one hand and European core spaces and core regions on the other thus moves to the center of his considerations; interconnectedness and transfer by means of experience and travel become central motifs and in this way peripheralize the concept of the periphery. A central interest of Schmale’s is the discourse of Europe and Europeanization in architecture, from which he derives the concept of Europe as textual and pictorial narrative(s). In doing so, however, definitional internal divisions are deliberately avoided and instead point-like condensations of Europe represented by countries, regions and cities are extrapolated. On the one hand, the affiliation of Serbia to Europe is drawn as broken primarily by Ottoman rule, but fundamentally put out of discussion, and on the other hand – and this is the focus here – the center of Europe is seen and accentuated along the Berlin-Vienna connection.13 Anecdotally, Schmale refers in this context to taxonomic attempts to calculate a centre of Europe and to find it in Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine or Slovakia, depending on the assumed borders of the continent. What is impressive here is the depth-­ historical grasp of the idea of centering achieved with recourse to early modern maps: Prague is most clearly assumed to be the capital of the Holy Roman Empire in Johannes Putsch’s Europa Regina (1537), and Bohemia is stylized as the heart of a personified Europe. Friedrich Naumann’s hegemonic-imperial appropriation of Central Europe is also thematized, although it is not a bridgehead or outpost claim at all, but rather the image of a bridge that Schmale draws with the Berlin-Vienna  Schlögel 2008, p. 27.  Schmale, Wolfgang: Mein Europa. Reisetagebücher eines Historikers. Vienna/Cologne/Weimar: Böhlau Verlag 2013, p. 10. 13  Schmale 2013, pp. 139–157. 11 12

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connection. Both cities were immediate neighbours of the Iron Curtain on the western side, whereby a position along the middle is insinuated into the division of Germany. For Austria, the bridging function not only between West and East, but also to all states that emerged from the Habsburg Monarchy beyond the caesura dates of 1945 and 1918 is emphasized. Schmale thus addresses both the appropriation of centre functions and the rivalry over bridge functions of the East-Central Europe concept implicitly, but in essence. A unifying Central European agenda, which Schmale emphasizes as quite essential, consists in the main responsibility for the memory of the Shoa.14 This is subsequently inscribed in comprehensive characterizations of the cities of Berlin and Vienna, where the main attention is again given to the architectures and especially topographies of memory. In this context, Schmale foregrounds the Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Berlin, whose spatially and functionally open borders in the cityscape he reconciles with Ruth Klüger’s memories of Theresienstadt: In both cases, past and present overlap in a way that dissolves boundaries. Alfred Hrdlicka’s memorial against war and fascism in Vienna, on the other hand, is seen as the end point of a rather virtual European axis in the cityscape, the Shoa memorial on Judenplatz designed by Rachel Whiteread rather marginalized. Schmale is unequivocal in this context: Berlin dealt with the memory of its own guilt more openly than Vienna. In addition, both cities were guiding transfers to the East of Europe, which had also inscribed itself topographically in Berlin’s surroundings, for example in the Russian colony in Potsdam and its churches. The only thing that is expressly missing from his palette of transfers and interconnections in this larger Berlin is Eastern Central Europe, which is actually so close. Nevertheless, continuing his conception of Europe as a text, Schmale sums up: “Berlin today is the walk-in book of European history”,15 which is read towards the interconnections of Germany’s regions with its neighbours, above all towards the East. In Vienna, on the other hand, Schmale finds the large perspective axes that are so characteristic of Berlin and also of Paris lacking; axes of meaning would therefore first have to be opened up. The metonymic conclusion is: “Vienna was the capital of an empire that suffered from its lack of clarity”.16 Accordingly, the diversity and variety of different Viennas is also accentuated, such as Bohemian, Jewish, and Polish Vienna  – but these explicitly did not form a hybrid here.

3 Summary In summary, then, the most important questions that arise around the definitions of East Central Europe commonly used in historical scholarship concern the discussion of the centre of the continent and the interspatiality between community structures in historical transit from heterogeneous, polycentric empires to homogeneous,  Schmale 2013, p. 143.  Schmale 2013, p. 145. 16  Schmale 2013, p. 151. 14 15

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monocentric (nation) states. Other constants are the discussions about the functional and spatial relationship between center and periphery as well as the analytical potential of local levels of reference and comparison (cities, territorially dispersed ethnic groups), which can at least be located below the level of (nation-) states. With regard to the positions of the traveler Schmale, treated in detail here, on the one hand, and the essayist Schlögel, together with the East-Central European literary figures (Konrad, Kundera, Milosz) he works with, on the other, it is noticeable, against the background of the historiographical definitions, that there are differences above all in the topographical concept of the type of city. Schmale looks for the axes and finds them above all in Berlin, whereas for Schlögel it is the selection by means of growth that makes the “casually agglomerated”.17 Prague strangely evenly-centred and makes it a symbol. Beyond that, there is much consonance to be heard: Both authors put dichotomous constructions of Europe along a West-East axis  – and thus also the question of the center of the space/continent – far behind, both do not explicitly name East-Central Europe, both see it primarily represented in literature and cities, in a sense constructed as concentrated. In this way, they process the historiographical arguments and postulates of seeing and reading East-Central Europe as an ethnic-confessional space of concentration and coexistence. Common to both, finally and quite essentially, is the idea that the obligation to remember the Shoa, the spatial and functional condensation of maximum negation of the coexistence of ethnic groups, is a central source of meaning for a search for and location of Central Europe.

References Augustynowicz, Christoph: Geschichte Ostmitteleuropas. Ein Abriss. Wien: new academic press 2. Aufl. 2014, S. 28–32. Augustynowicz, Christoph: Between Appropriation and Rivalry: Some Remarks on the Concept of East Central Europe in Recent Anglo-American and German Historiography, in: Prace Filologiczne. Literaturoznawstwo 9 (12) (2019), H. 1, S. 163–174. Bideleux, Robert/Jeffries, Ian: A History of Eastern Europe. Crisis and Change. London/New York: Routledge 2. Aufl. 2007. Krzoska, Markus/Lichy, Kolja/Rometsch, Konstantin: Jenseits von Ostmitteleuropa? Zur Aporie einer deutschen Nischenforschung, in: Journal of Modern European History 16 (2018), H. 1, S. 40–63. Naumann, Friedrich: Mitteleuropa. Berlin: Georg Reimer 1915. Roth, Harald (Hg.): Studienhandbuch Östliches Europa, Bd. 1: Geschichte Ostmittel- und Südosteuropas. Köln/Weimar/Wien: Böhlau Verlag 2. Aufl. 2009; Bd. 2 ist dem Russländischen Reich bzw. der Sowjetunion gewidmet. Schlögel, Karl: Die Mitte liegt ostwärts. Europa im Übergang. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag 2008, S. 15–17. Schlözer, August Ludwig: Allgemeine Nordische Geschichte. Aus den neuesten und besten Nordischen Schriftstellern und nach eigenen Untersuchungen beschrieben, und als eine Geographische und Historische Einleitung zur richtigen Kenntnis aller Skandinavischen,

17

 Schlögel 2008, p. 32.

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Finnischen, Slavischen, Lettischen und Sibirischen Völker, besonders in alten und mittleren Zeiten. Halle: Johann Justinus Gebauer 1771. Schmale, Wolfgang: Mein Europa. Reisetagebücher eines Historikers. Wien/Köln/Weimar: Böhlau Verlag 2013. Wandycz, Piotr: The Price of Freedom. A History of East Central Europe from the Middle Ages to the present. London/New York: Routledge 2. Aufl. 2001, S. 1, Übersetzung Christoph Augustynowicz. Wolff, Larry: Inventing Eastern Europe. The Map of Civilization on the Mind of the Enlightenment, Stanford: Stanford University Press 1994.

Working on Europe About a Flamboyant Project of Young Intellectuals

Kay Wolfinger

Could you briefly outline what your own relationship to Europe was like before you started your project? Has this relationship changed as a result of the project work? Robert Eberhardt: As a German and as someone born in Thuringia at the time of the GDR, one has a European dimension inscribed in one’s curriculum vitae, at the beginning of which, with the fall of the Wall, there was an experience of spatial liberation and departure, and one then also pursued this in one’s studies, for example with a semester abroad, and tried to read: out to European neighbours. So it was always a pro-European identity that I had. Through our association, this has once again been underpinned by history and literature, because we also want to work on a conceptual history of Europe and understand Europe in depth. Of course, such an approach also broadens one’s own relationship to Europe in every respect. How did your project Working on Europe develop, when you think back to how the idea came about? As a follow-up project to the Junge Salon1 in Berlin? If you want to report the exact genealogy, you could understand it as a successor project of the Junge Salon, which I maintained with Simon Strauß for three years in Berlin. At some point, the time for that was over; we weren’t quite young anymore  The Junge Salon was an initiative jointly initiated by Robert Eberhardt, Theresia Enzensberger and Simon Strauß, which addressed a closed circle of young intellectuals and reflected on and discussed various topics of the day with invited guests. 1

In conversation with Robert Eberhardt (Berlin) and Simon Strauß (Frankfurt a. M.) K. Wolfinger (*) Institut für Deutsche Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_4

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either. Then this European initiative was founded out of the Berlin Salon. Also together with other creative people and publishers, such as the writer Nora Bossong. But the association also came into being as a reaction to a political event, namely Brexit. That was also the time when we asked ourselves about our own relationship to Europe, when we writers decided to take on this complex and not to burn our energies in the small-German identity struggle. The fact that you plan individual meetings to do this has gradually crystallized, and that you meet in different places to think? Exactly. We have different pillars of our work; one of them is the European meetings, which always take place in a place on the periphery, never yet in a capital city. It started with me in Thuringia, in Breitungen, where we reflected on the term “Heimat” when there was no Ministry of Heimat. So you can also see how terms shift in a short time or are also used politically. Or we were in Switzerland and thought about “elite”, in the border region between Germany and France, in Alsace, we dealt with “security” there, in Manchester with the concept of “work” and in Poland with the relationship between “religion” and “nation”. Do you come up with these terms by thinking about them together, or how do you decide? These are determined on a grass-roots basis, and that still has such a youthful drive with us. There is a general secretary and an organizer of the respective meeting, but otherwise everything is self-organized. We are not a huge association with “funding”, but an independent group of intellectuals that travels through Europe and develops various other projects, about which I can also tell you something if you like. Gladly! So in addition to these meetings, which are the pacemaker of the association, there is also the European Archive of Voices (Europäisches Archiv der Stimmen), which is being built up from interviews with European witnesses, as we call them. These are people who were born before 1945 and who have experienced, reflected on or helped to change European dimensions through their biography. This project is supported by the Gerda Henkel Foundation, the Krupp Foundation and others. A young team of international interviewers has spread out, is looking for these witnesses and would like to make these interviews comparable by means of a common catalogue of questions. The aim is to present them in an exhibition, to make these voices accessible on a website and to keep these voices of the first people to live in the EU alive. Deliberately only voices, no film recordings, because the moving images would overlay the content. They should really be voices from the off, which could, for example, be a special testimony in a hundred years. What criteria do you use to find the voices? What are the search grids? This is up to the interviewers in the respective country, who suggest their interviewees to us. When will this sub-project of Arbeit an Europa be completed? The archive of voices will be completed in 2021. Interviews will certainly be added again and again. But the project phase, the financing and the presentation is planned for the end of 2021.

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What are the general goals of Working on Europe? Or is entering into conversation, entering into discourse already the goal? One can perhaps approach the matter by describing what it is not: It is not a political agenda, it is not a political association; but it is also not a youth exchange consisting of the joyful togetherness of different nations, but it is a decided conceptual work, in Blumenberg’s sense “work on myth”: We are working on Europe and first want to understand Europe for ourselves. What are its roots? What are the reasons and conflicts in the history of ideas and culture? From this, a text production is to be developed. The idea of networking is of course also present, inviting suitable people to these meetings. This has already led to many friendships and literary collaborations, even relationships, but no children yet. Are there any other publications or books planned besides the texts on your blog? The blog mostly contains what results from our meetings. Of course, Arbeit an Europa is so enriching that many participants also produce their own texts. But we are also planning a book, namely a Europe glossary or a Europe alphabet, which will then also present the most important terms in a very concise way and would like to be a creative history of terms. In the development of your own personality: Which roles would you most likely ascribe to yourself? Publisher, art historian, networker? That sometimes seems like a lot, but many people today have such multiple professional personalities. Kleist, too, ordered his life in projects. So many “creatives” today are dependent on thinking in terms of this project-making through lack of permanent employment. And I would describe myself academically as an art historian; I am currently doing my doctorate in this subject. Otherwise, I’m a publisher and an art dealer. With these three terms you can actually tie it together well. There are certainly a lot of plans for the next few years in each of these areas. Or how far into the future are you looking? One usually makes three-year plans. I will continue my publishing house, develop monument projects in Thuringia and, from 2020, join the book and art shop Felix Jud in Hamburg as a partner. What are the next steps in the Working on Europe? The initiative continues to grow. We have founded an association and are supported by various sponsors. Our meetings will continue, for example in January (2020) in Slovenia, where we will be received by the former Prime Minister of the country, who recently attracted attention in the EU Parliament because he played the EU anthem on the harmonica. After the Archiv der Stimmen (archive of voices) and the Europe glossary, we want to focus more on education. In any case, it will be about external perception (lecture series, etc.) and will not be a secret intellectual circle – which still exists without a name. Shortly after the conversation with Robert Eberhardt, a meeting with Simon Strauß took place in October 2019, before his Munich Lehmkuhl reading from the current book Römische Tage. Strauß reported from his perspective on Arbeit an Europa and added crucial aspects to Robert Eberhardt’s remarks. Tell us about the genesis of the project and the history of its derivation.

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Simon Strauß: The association Arbeit an Europa has been around for a few years now. – Just now we were at the Blaues Sofa at the book fair. That’s where Nora Bossong and I presented the association. We both more or less founded it. Namely, in 2016, the night after Brexit, we were on the phone with each other wondering how we should now react to this as intellectuals; not to suggest the idea that writers or artists are the better politicians, but we wanted to focus on our core area: Language and concepts and how to bring them to life in a variety of ways. We then spent a year organising meetings in various peripheral European countries. The focus is always on a term, a title, which is debated intensively over a weekend, lectures give new impulses, and at the end there is a panel discussion. So it’s a theoretical paper, although it’s not academic. Exactly, not in a purely academic way, but rather associatively, looking at things from all possible angles and tapping on connotations that have slipped into sediments of past times. The idea of a living conceptual history that can be reappraised again and again, as established by Reinhart Koselleck or Joachim Ritter as an academic research project, naturally plays a role in this concept. But we also ask ourselves, how do we then arrive at connecting, today binding implications of concepts? Let’s take the word “Heimat” (Homeland) for example: at first glance it has negative connotations, is perhaps even used in a defamatory way, but could there not also be something in it that runs counter to the first, intuitive understanding? Might it not even be seen as acquiring a very particular notion of openness, a binding force? That is one strand of the project. Another idea matured later, in my summer in Rome in 2018, during which I also wrote the book Roman Days (Römische Tage). I asked myself: how can we as an association create something more stable, more permanent, an institution of European memory, so to speak? This gave rise to the idea of the “European Archive of Voices” (Europäisches Archiv der Stimmen), the second long-term project of Arbeit an Europa: to bring together strong and reflective voices from all European countries who have experienced European unification and have themselves helped to advance it. The goal was and is, in a sense, a “memorial foundation” of Europe. You would need a very idealistic sponsor. Yes, because in our time everything always has to have an “output”. In this project, my profession as a historian, journalist and author blurs with the idea of Europe. The elements are contemporary witnessing, interviewing, literary reappraisal. The aura of the human voice, what it allows to resonate unsaid, is the essential addition to the narrated memoir. Oral history is a highly interesting field. The journalistic dimension is the technique of the interview, that is, the questioning. The artistic – now still weakest – component asks what one can do with the assembled voices, how one can stage them and let them speak to people. What do voices convey? So, what do voices explicitly carry? Exactly, what do they express? Emotional cleverness? Maybe something that the speaker can’t control and yet comes through the voice? Something that is smarter than the speaker and reveals more about him than he is willing and able to say himself? Just as a text is often smarter than the author. Well, sometimes it is also dumber... But in the best case the text is smarter than the author and also smarter

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than its reader. The text is always more than can be said of it. It’s the same idea with the voice: that if someone speaks and their voice is recorded, it can be a rich resource for posterity. Something, therefore, that witnesses and is more than the speaker himself. It fits with your ghost project2: an almost mystical idea, but one that can’t be completely dismissed when you think of the great speeches of John F. Kennedy or Martin Luther King. That’s just a special impact, to hear the voice. There is something missing if you only see the speeches. One can then continue to ask: How will our time be remembered in 200 or 300 years? It is Koselleck’s talk of the “future past” that stands as a banner over our project. This is the idealistic dimension of the project, but it is important and it is also of great interest to the patrons and sponsors. Thanks to our funders, especially the Gerda Henkel Foundation and the Alfried Krupp von Bohlen und Halbach Foundation, we were able to launch in early 2019. At the end of the previous year, we had already made diverse collection attempts of the most varied kinds, because, after all, the basic idea quickly became clear: We want to tell the story of Europe through the voices of Europe, the voices of the generation born before 1945. So that’s the time limit you’re keeping? Exactly. The Enzensberger generation, which is still alive now, which was already politically aware when the European Union was formed, which is afflicted with a completely different density of experience. Then we set the scene: old meets young; young intellectuals hold a conversation lasting about three hours with a European witness from their own country. We recruited the young interviewers via various networks, including social networks. The core of the association is about ten people. You can meet them on our website: https://archiveofvoices.eu. Finding the young interviewers, that’s what worked best. At the beginning of 2019, we invited them to Hamburg and held a two-day workshop there – with Heinz Bude, among others, who was our chairman and who developed this questionnaire with us. What is the significance of the questionnaire? This list of questions serves as a common basis for all interviews. To say it right from the start: It is not about a journalistic interview, but about experiences that are to be told and that can take up more space than is available within a journalistic format. It’s not just supposed to be a question-and-answer game, but it’s supposed to set narrative impulses. The big topics that are covered are then again marked by catchwords, such as home, childhood, education, work; these are the big over-­ themes. Political consciousness, cultural consciousness, the concept of freedom, ideas of the future, experiences of conflict, possibilities of resistance. Religion and the idea of the future, seen from today: What do you think Europe will look like in 50 years? – And that’s what we’ve been doing ever since: holding discussions – and above all, organising them first. It is quite a work, “Arbeit an Europa”. How many interviews will there be in total?

 Meant, among others, the book Das Archiv der Geister. The spirit of the archive, see the author’s list of writings. 2

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There should be about 50. So far we have conducted 25 [October 2019, May 2020: 44]. Conducting the interviews is one thing, but then comes the second step, the transcription. It will be conducted in Slovenian, Macedonian, Bosnian, French, Spanish, Luxembourgish, and then it will be transcribed by the interviewers themselves, and then it will have to be translated as well. – The main cost is the translators. Last but not least, everything goes through a professional proofreading by native speakers. In the second half of 2020, events organized by the Goethe-Institut will take place to present our project in different cities across Europe. What’s the next step with the translation? Will it be put online or made into a book? First of all, there is the professionally and interactively designed website of the Voices Archive with a map. By the beginning of 2021 at the latest, we will upload all interviews, audio sequences and images. So digital accessibility is the first step. The second step is to present the content through events and discussion panels: For example, we have already done this on a trial basis at the Culture Days in Hedersleben: we extracted audio segments from five interviews and showed, with the matching translations, how different the answers are, how they complement each other, how text and sound interact. The former Icelandic President Vigdis Finnbogadottir and an Italian Jesuit priest, Bartolomeo Sorge, and thirdly a trade unionist from Poland, Henryk Wujec, and Jean-Claude Carrière, a French director. We saw how differently these four thought about their lives and what that has to do with Europe. Or an Austrian writer who, for example, is connected to the Austrian national anthem through special experiences. Her wealth of experience connects people. We are talking about intellectuals who are willing to reflect, who are suggested by our interviewers and confirmed by us. – We hope to later evaluate our interviews in collaboration with universities and perhaps even teach them in schools. But that may take until 2022. So it’s also about developing materials that are made available to schools so that students can do something with them again.3 There is already much more of this in other countries. For example, I got to know an initiative in Copenhagen. There is a young Danish couple who have been travelling around Europe in a caravan for two years, asking all kinds of people on the street about something or other. With this material they now go from school to school and bring the intellectual diversity of Europe into the Danish classrooms. For us it’s more about the historical dimension, but I do think it’s interesting for pupils to learn about history in this way through the biography of a person and also through the questions of the younger interviewers. At the University of Bremen there is already interest in a possible academic cooperation. We also make the material available to artists. For example, the young composer Michael Langemann, who is  The author presented under the title “A Million Voices. Reflections on the Arbeit an Europa Project” a scientific approach to Arbeit an Europa at the teacher training course Werte in Europa. Deutschunterricht europäisch gestalten (Prof. Dr. Sabine Anselm and Prof. Dr. Sonja Kuri) on 27.11.2019 at the Wilhelmsgymnasium in Munich and showed which teaching models and school projects can be constructed from the Europäisches Archiv der Stimmen. 3

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currently working on a kind of oratorio of our voices that presents the richness of the European language. The idea of Europe is not the same as the European Union as an institution. It is important, no question, but the idea of “Europe” is more valuable than the technology of the European Union. Can you even break it down to an answer of what your goals are, or is it more of a big meaning space, a desire to save an idea, to make something connectable for a new generation? First goal: to understand Europe not only politically and economically, but culturally and historically. Hence the second goal: to find the European narrative, which is always so much in demand, not always only in the present time, but to take the past seriously as a multifaceted and self-broken, sparkling space of inspiration. Responsibility can only be developed by dealing with the past. This is, so to speak, the antithesis of today’s present ego, which is dominated in many ways by social media: the fixation of the individual purely on the moment of the continued present. Third goal: to create a network between young intellectuals throughout Europe, between people who grow together through this project and, if possible, also generate follow-up projects. To think further: out of this network, a place should one day emerge, an academy, a physical anchorage for all our things, and there the archive will then also be permanently accessible. I think it is important, even in this day and age, to dare to be so idealistic and to formulate a vision. Sure. That’s what I said to the host of the Blaue Sofa (Blue Sofa) who used to say, “But isn’t everything very different today and exactly not the way you see it...?” Yes, of course everything is different. That’s why it’s all the more important to fight it with idealism and imagination. If you always answer only to stupidity, nastiness and flattening, you will not get out of the cycle. One should dream again and develop idealism; not from the point of view of, “What is the use of it now today or tomorrow?” Sometimes it’s quite nice to think in larger time spans. The project is a stock for the future. Does this also deprive us of the utilitarian demands of the present? Without a doubt. For me personally, this is also a very decisive project that does not follow the stimulus-reaction scheme of journalism. We also notice this in the interest we receive. Nora Bossong and I in particular represent a generation of writers who no longer rely purely on their own writing. Writing is important to me, but it only lives for me if it is the starting point for collaborative ideas. With my book Römische Tage (Roman Days), I try to ... ...which, after all, contains clear European passages... ...quite right to point out these passages, because this book is much quieter and less thesis-like than my debut Seven Nights (Sieben Nächte). That is, you made sure when writing your latest book that it was embedded in the Working on Europe? Yes, in a way... But less in the association’s programme than in my own work on Europe, as I understand it and to which I contribute in my personal way. But I can’t quite separate the two, because one goes hand in hand with the other. – It becomes clearer when one is in Rome, or in southern Europe for that matter, how important

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it would be to have a healing force that outshines fragmentation and political resentment. Stefan Zweig’s Speech on the moral detoxification of Europe (Rede über die moralische Entgiftung Europas), which he gave in Rome in 1932, has also been very important for me. Or Franz Marc, who dreams of a pan-European movement. That also used to exist among the Romantics. With our archives it is then like Goethe, when a guest came to him and Goethe remarked to him: “Don’t give me any views. Views I have myself. Give me news” – news in the sense of experience. Is your reference to the Romantics also a new appreciation of Romanticism for the present? The reference to Romanticism was already very strong in Seven Nights. Yet it is precisely the reference back to Romanticism or the idea of an ultra-­ Romanticism that is often under fire nowadays. All the more important to defend romanticism! What could be more romantic than the idea that, all over Europe, young people are bound together by idealistic work on Europe? A romantic idea: bonding over the idea. I want to counter the fools who make it so easy to discredit and devalue the past. Secure the wealth that already exists. Exactly. Since you also want to counter the European fatigue of the younger generation: What do you think is the cause of this fatigue? Probably the economic aspect is the decisive one. The idea that there is such an injustice between brothers and sisters. Many see a far too strong concentration of capital and power in the north of Europe. There is the money, the power, the moral interpretative sovereignty; an uneasy mixture. European fatigue is turning into aggressiveness in Italy. Everyone says the EU is too bureaucratic and technocratic, we need a grand narrative. And what does Ursula von der Leyen do first? She abolishes the Commission for Culture. Completely ignorant of what Jean Monet said: If he could found the European Union again, he would found it on the basis of culture, not politics. Will you continue to work on the European idea in your next book project? That’s still unclear. I’ve just published an anthology for the series in the FAZ about forgotten plays. Spielplanänderung, is the name of the book in the series.4 And that in our time, which is drunk with its own zeitgeist. There is to be a “Long Night of Forgotten Plays” (Lange Nacht der vergessenen Stücke) in Berlin in the autumn, with plays, dance, readings, discussions on the forgotten canon of European theatre literature. I’m preparing that right now. To what extent did your former Berlin salon play a part in your work on Europe, even though the current project is not based on it? Did the salon prepare something for you culturally? He certainly did. The “Junge Salon” has found its extension and continuation in the European meetings of “Arbeit an Europa”. – The next European Salon will take place in Slovenia on the theme of “Tradition”. You’ve always had conservative themes, though? Home, nation, elite, religion...  Strauß, Simon (ed.): Spielplanänderung! 30 plays that the theatre needs today. Stuttgart: Tropen 2020. 4

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And this despite the fact that the majority of us are left-liberal minded. We deliberately choose such buzzwords so that people will argue a bit. We deliberately look for terms that concern us and our public. It should be added that we also talked about resistance and work, about the last topic in Manchester, with trade union representatives. Or, in Uppsala, about nature. This activity should definitely be continued. Many thanks to Robert Eberhardt and Simon Strauß for the opportunity to have our conversations included in this Europa volume as a research object, even if the aura of the voices must be acquired from other sources. The flamboyance of the thoughts is expressed in the presence of the words.

Reference Strauß, Simon (Hg.): Spielplanänderung! 30 Stücke, die das Theater heute braucht. Stuttgart: Tropen 2020.

Part IV Europe and Europeans: An Identity-Forming Entity?

Europe and the Concept of Empire Oliver Jahraus

The following considerations can be placed under the general heading of literature and politics. For their focus is fundamentally on the political reflection potential of literature. Specifically, it is about the concept of empire and the question of how such an empire is to be imagined not only historically, but also politically. The point, then, is to use this concept not only as an analytical but also as a diagnostic instrument. And the space of reflection in which concept and imagination develop is literary and media history. So what is it about this idea of empire, and to what extent must literary and media studies attend to it, especially as it looks to Europe? It is precisely this reorientation that brings with it not only a disciplinary specialization, but rather a higher degree of abstraction and a more basic theoretical orientation. It is not just a matter of historical manifestations, but rather of the idea that expresses itself in historical, but even more so in fictional manifestations. One could certainly place this undertaking in the vicinity of a Spenglerian morphology – in this case a morphology of empire – albeit not a historical morphology, but rather a literary or fictional one, which thus opens up a political space for reflection in the first place and in this respect does not act axiomatically, but rather axiologically. This will be particularly noticeable through this focus on Europe because it will become apparent that it is precisely in this context that the concept of empire and its discussion, its morphology and its political reflection on the aforementioned potentials are particularly explosive. Precisely because Europe as a historical and political entity has not appeared directly as an empire either in history or in the present (of the European Union), precisely because empires in Europe have not primarily imagined or characterized themselves as Europe, nor, conversely, because the European Union describes itself as an empire, this concept allows us to sound out a space for reflection other than one that is merely historical or political science. In O. Jahraus (*) Department I, German Philology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_5

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this way, the concept of empire has a similar appeal as the concepts of civil war or revolution, sovereignty or state of emergency in political debate across disciplinary and media boundaries. First, to the term itself: The concept of empire is used without major problematization wherever it is a matter of characterizing certain state and political formations in an overarching idea of order and as a structure or association of rule – as an empire.1 The historical paradigm that stands out almost unrivalled is the Imperium Romanum. Next to it stands – even with greater historical persistence – the Chinese Empire.2 But this is only the beginning; things get interesting in the next step. Thus, not only on the object level of real history are there processes of reconstitution of an empire by reference to old empires through models of translation and filiation3 – the most famous example is certainly the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (Heiliges römische Reich deutscher Nation) as a translation of the Imperium Romanum – but also on the meta-level of the use of terms the question is raised to what extent newer empires reactivate old empires or revitalize their idea, e.g. when the British Empire or the American Empire is spoken of with reference to the Imperium Romanum, for example.4 The further such factual-historical considerations progress, however, the more clearly and unavoidably a fundamental problem of conceptual history and concept formation/conceptual work comes to light. The more intensively the term is used and, not least, instrumentalized diagnostically, the more problematic the term becomes, which begins with the definition, continues through the historical diagnoses, and does not end with the political implications. Yes, it seems almost paradoxical: The diagnostic potential becomes greatest where the term itself becomes most indistinct. And this point can also be clearly identified: that is Europe and the currently decisive political form of Europe, the European Union. Is the European Union an empire? And what is gained, what is the diagnostic added value if one calls it the Union, or even Europe as a whole? In his 2005 book Imperien, Herfried Münkler examines The Logic of World Domination  – from Ancient Rome to the United States (Die Logik der  Darwin, Charles: Der imperiale Traum. Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus Verlag 2017; Burbank, Jane/Cooper, Frederick: Empires in world history. Power and the politics of difference. Princeton. Oxford: Princeton UP 2010; Huf, Hans-Christian: Imperium. The Rise and Fall of Great Empires. Berlin: Econ 2004; Huf, Hans-Christian: Imperium II. Aufstieg und Fall großer Reiche. Berlin: List 2006. 2  Teggart, Frederick J.: Rome and China, Berkeley: University of California Press 1939; Scheidel, Walter (ed.): Rome and China. Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires. Oxford Studies in Early Empires. Oxford/New York: Oxford UP 2009. 3  Münkler, Herfried: Translation, Filiation und Analogiebildung: Politische Legitimation und strategische Reflexion im Spiegel vergangener Imperien, in: Ders., Eva Marlene Hausteiner (eds.): Die Legitimation von Imperien. Strategien und Motive im 19. und 20. Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus Verlag 2012, pp. 34–69. 4   Hausteiner, Eva Marlene: Greater than Rome. Neubestimmungen britischer Imperialität 1870–1914. Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus Verlag 2015; Huhnholz, Sebastian: Krisenimperialität. Romereference in the US-American Discourse of Empire. Frankfurt a. M./New York: Campus Verlag 2014. 1

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Weltherrschaft – vom alten Rom bis zu den Vereinigten Staaten), according to the subtitle.5 Two relevant historical examples have already been mentioned, the British Empire could be added. In any case, Münkler is far from treating Europe or the European Union as an empire as well. “The imperial challenge of Europe”, as the last section of the book is called, he sees in the imperial appearance of the USA on the one side, in the West, and in the confrontation with a post-imperial space on the other side, in the East. But the very last sentence of his book reads: “Europe’s future will therefore not be able to do without borrowing from the order model of empires.”6 What at least appears as a perspective in Münkler’s book is already presupposed in others and shows, one way or another, that the idea of Europe and the idea of empire are not so far apart. Two examples may be mentioned: In 2018, the dissertation of Oliver Jürgen Junge, which was submitted and accepted in the winter semester 2016/2017  in Konstanz, was published. It is entitled Imperium and examines, according to its subtitle, “The Legal Nature of the European Union in Comparison with Imperial Orders from the Roman to the British Empire”.7 It is comparative in nature and examines constitutional aspects of the European Union by comparing it with other empires. The concept of empire is thus elaborated into a constitutional-historical analytical-comparative concept. The second example will play a role at the end of this essay. Back to the definition of empire. There is no more reliable indicator of problems of definition than attempts at definition – and this in a relatively large and above all, as can be widely observed, persistent field of empire research. In his “History and Theory of a Political System” (the subtitle), meaning empire (the main title), Ulrich Leitner sums up the situation under the heading “Conceptual Arbitrariness”. As an attempt to get to grips with this situation, he cites a definitional attempt by Jürgen Osterhammel as a paradigm.8 With its eight definitions, it is differentiated enough to cover a certain range of variation in historical manifestations; on the other hand, it is precise enough to determine a core of essence, so that this definition has been used as a point of reference by other approaches, such as, to pick out his book Imperien, by Herbert Münkler. Two of the essential aspects should be mentioned: Firstly, it is about a group of rulers, and this has – secondly – a clear structure of centre and periphery. The other aspects are subordinated to these basic dimensions, such as forms or density of communication between centre and peripheries and between different peripheries. Other types of definition also presuppose a spatial location, but focus more strongly on the internal cohesion of the empire. Jane Burbank and Frederick Cooper,  Münkler, Herfried: Empires. The Logic of World Domination – from Ancient Rome to the United States. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 2005. 6  Ibid., p. 254. 7  Junge, Oliver Jürgen: Imperium. The Legal Nature of the European Union in Comparison with Imperial Orders from the Roman to the British Empire. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2018. 8  Leitner, Ulrich: Imperium. Geschichte und Theorie eines politischen Systems. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus Verlag 2011, pp. 8–9. 5

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for example, in their book Empires in world history, focus on the contrast between empire and nation-state, explicitly rejecting a historical line from nation-state to empire.9 For the empire, they assume a repertoire of forms of exercising power, which seems too indeterminate, and speak of imperial trajectories. Although this concept is formally extremely fruitful, it would have to be filled with more content if one wants to avoid the impression of an arbitrary and arbitrarily large historical range of variation. But on this basis, one might well consider the extent to which the emergence of the modern state as a nation-state uses the idea of nationality, of belonging to the nation, as a cohesive force by establishing a model for each citizen to relate to the state by recourse to the, that is, his or her nationality, which he or she shares with the other citizens of the state. If nationality is then emotionally charged, one is armed even against an Imperium Romanum, think for instance of Kleist’s Hermannschlacht (1808). This is precisely what is not possible in the Imperium, and it would have to be asked what replaces such a national cohesive force. In empire research, various answers to this question are available, a whole series of which could be subsumed under the idea of a win-win situation. The power of the empire is not only guaranteed by the means of power of the empire, e.g. troops stationed everywhere, but also by a benefit, e.g. the status as a legal subject (if one could be included in this category at all), as in the Roman Empire. In George Orwell’s grandiose novel Burmese Days (1934), the main character, the timber merchant John Flory, believes he is safe in the British colony of Burma from the intrigues of the corrupt local judge U Po Kyin and expresses this safety with the sentence “Civis romanus sum”. That he then actually falls victim to these intrigues is Orwell’s way of telling of the fall of empire, of the internal erosion of the British Empire. This benefit to the inside also results in a demarcation to the outside, as one can also read in Orwell, and especially against those forces from the outside that already work within the borders of the empire: the enclosed excluded. Here is a repetition of what was already guiding in ancient conceptions: the empire sets itself against the outside and the outsiders by classifying them as barbarians. Barbarians are the foreigners, the others, the non-integrated and thus those who have no share in the benefit of the empire and do not profit from it. The term ‘barbarian’ is first of all a functional concept of differentiation, which – speaking in terms of system theory – operates with a distinction and the marking of one side and thereby creates – as one can read in Reinhart Koselleck – an asymmetry.10 It becomes problematic for the empire, as one can read again in Orwell, when the barbarians have already invaded the empire, not only spatially, but when they have conquered its institutions, occupied or undermined its positions, when they have assimilated not only themselves to  Burbank, Cooper Burbank et al. Empires in world history. Power and the politics of difference. Princeton. Oxford: Princeton UP 2010, p. 10 and p. 2: “This book does not follow the conventional narrative that leads inexorably from empire to nation-state.” 10  Koselleck, Reinhart: Zur historisch-politischen Semantik asymmetrischer Gegenbegriffe, in: Ders. (ed.): Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp 1989, pp. 211–259, here especially pp. 218–229. 9

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the empire, but also the empire itself, when they have set in motion an immanent process of erosion, as is also decisive for the Imperium Romanum. The asymmetry in the relation of the terms, of which “barbarian” is one, “cives Romanus” in a certain (historical) constellation the other, turns around. The difference between empire and barbarians defines the empire and at the same time marks its utmost endangerment. Or, to put it even more drastically: the destruction of an empire by the emergence of a new one. This is, for example, the thesis put forward by the British historian Peter Heather in his book Invasion of the Barbarians (Invasion der Barbaren)11  – in a twist that is highly significant for these considerations: The migration of peoples, he argues, not only led to the diffusion and destruction of the (Western) Roman Empire, but gave rise to modern Europe. It is natural to understand this process as a form of translatio imperii. Elsewhere  – in his book The Rebirth of Rome (Die Wiedergeburt Roms) – Peter Heather has developed precisely this thesis and seen in the papacy such a translatio of the Roman Empire – of course with immense cultural implications for modern Europe.12 Because of such structures, processes, and trajectories, empires find it difficult to recognize other empires. There is hardly any need to do so when one thinks of the Imperium Romanum in its heyday; but it is extremely problematic when one thinks of the Chinese Empire in the nineteenth century, which, although inferior in every respect, was able to see itself vis-à-vis the European powers not as a power among powers, but still as an unrivalled empire, while at the same time falling into a form of semi-colonialism.13 Stephan Thome’s novel The God of Barbarians (Der Gott der Barbaren), published in September 2018, makes use of this historical constellation. It not only tells the story of a German missionary, but above all of how two empires clash and can only perceive each other as barbarians. This novel gains a special dynamic by showing how a group of Chinese rebels use a strange adaptation of the Christian faith as an ideological resource to rise up against the Chinese emperor and establish a Christian theocracy. In the clash of empires, nationalities (Chinese) can become as irrelevant as creeds (Christians). They can even transform cohesive forces into revolutionary energies. Here, too, the concept of empire is used not only to make a political situation transparent and ultimately narratable, but also to repeatedly ask the reader to cross-­ reference the historical constellation with a current political situation: the explosive power of religious fanaticism for an empire.  Heather, Peter: Invasion of the Barbarians. The Emergence of Europe in the First Millennium AD.  Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Heather 2011 (in the English original under the title: Empires and Barbarians. Migration, Development and the Fall of Rome [in a later edition the subtitle is: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe]. London: Macmillan 2009). 12  Heather, Peter: The Rebirth of Rome. Popes, rulers and the world of the Middle Ages. Translated by Hans Freundl and Heike Schlatterer. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta Rulers and the World of the Middle Ages. Translated by Hans Freundl and Heike Schlatterer. 2014 (in the English original under the title: The Restoration of Rome. Barbarian Popes and Imperial Pretenders. London: Oxford UP 2013). 13  Leutner, Mechthild/Mühlhahn, Klaus (eds.): Kolonialkrieg in China. Die Niederschlagung der Boxerbewegung 1900–1901. Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag 2007. 11

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And something else becomes clear: Since the empire is susceptible to cultural, national or religious hostility, one can see that it is not solely defined politically. With the barbarians, not only is the Other of empire given, but also potentially already its downfall. In this respect, the concept of empire always permits a view into its cultural constitution and its fragility. Two absolutely relevant examples may be mentioned, two films by the Canadian director Denys Arcand with titles that are also striking and have become almost topical: The Fall of the American Empire (Le Déclin de l’empire américain) (1986) and The Invasion of the Barbarians (Les invasions barbares) (2003). The appealing peculiarity of these films is that they spell out the grand narrative of the fall of an empire not historically or politically, but culturally or – even more precisely – on the level of social, intimate interactions. In such a doomsday scenario, when a ruling culture (empire) becomes fragile, the most intimate partner can turn into a barbarian. Precisely because the spatial structure of empire is so important in this type of definition, one can explain why there are hardly any points of contact between historical empire research and the proposal to redefine empire entirely, as Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri have done in their book Empire. Leitner, with Wilfried von Bredow, calls the book a “late Marxist consolation book”14 because it identifies, or rather exposes, America as a de-limited capitalist world order. Hardt and Negri are no longer concerned with concrete forms of domination, but with abstract forms of distributing and enforcing sovereignty, with the result that empire is also no longer bound to a concrete spatial extent. On the contrary. You write, “It is decentered and deterritorializing.”15 If Jean Baudrillard had blended Saussure’s concept of value in his theory of signification with the law of value of Marx’s economics in his book The symbolic exchange and death (Lʼéchange symbolique et la mort, 1976),16 Hardt and Negri blend elements of such an inspired Critique of Political Economy (Kritik der politischen Ökonomie) (Karl Marx) with the political theory of sovereignty, which is more or less explicitly oriented towards Carl Schmitt. How one deals with this conceptual arbitrariness in history and political science need not be of interest here, because as a historian of literature and culture one can make a heuristic virtue out of conceptual necessity. If one pays attention to the concept of empire in media manifestations and to imperial ideas, i.e. conceptions of rule, power, state and empires, one will find something in the broad spectrum, not least in contemporary literature and culture. One thinks, for example, of the Star Wars universe, which at its core tells a story of the transition of a republic to an empire17 and of how this empire is in turn fought by rebels and Jedi knights in a  Leitner 2011, p. 78.  Hardt, Michael/Negri, Antonio: Empire. The New World Order. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus Verlag Antonio: Empire. The New World Order. Frankfurt a. M. 2002, p. 11. 16   Baudrillard, Jean: Symbolic exchange and death [1976]. Munich: Matthes & Seitz Baudrillard 1982. 17  Tollen, David W.: Star Wars and History: Roman Republic and Empire, URL: https://pintsofhistory.com/2016/01/17/star-wars-and-history-roman-republic-and-empire/ (last accessed 06.06.2020); and Decker, Kevin S.: By any means necessary: Tyranny, Democracy, Republic, and 14 15

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partisan war until the empire will have fallen and a new political situation – a new republic – will have arisen. The very concept of empire is legion in fantasy and science fiction literature, and even striking examples could arguably be read with some profit as imperial stories. Isaac Asimov, for example, designed a galactic empire; and if one takes seriously his remarks about the function of science fiction, namely to provide an aesthetic blueprint for the future of humanity in the medium of literature,18 and connects this to the fictional imagination and construction of empires, it becomes clear that the concept and imagination of empire converge on a concept that serves to demonstrate and discuss utopian or dystopian designs for political order. In principle, one would have to consider to what extent one could justify an imperial reading. The relevant examples are well known. They are always situated on the political, geographical or conceptual border of empire. Kleist’s Hermannschlacht has already been mentioned as an example. Many texts by this author, especially those with a clearly political thrust, could be read in this way. One thinks, for example, of the Zerbrochnen Krug. The Netherlands in its struggle against the Spanish empire itself appears on the fault line between nation-state (Utrecht must be defended) and empire (the colony of Batavia must be subjugated). Thus the drama makes it politically clear: democracy may not be defended at the Hindu Kush, to quote a prominent saying, but the virginity of the bride is defended at the national border; only in this way – nation-state, not imperial – can virginity be mobilized as a political and military resource.19 Such literary imperial structures have most recently been traced by Boris Previšić, referring to the Habsburg Empire and here again looking at the transition from an imperial to a post-imperial phase: “It becomes apparent that certain features of imperial space in all its variance are reflected not only in the factual description of literary treatment, but above all later during a post-imperial national phase in utopian designs.”20 Thus Previšić arrives at a recasting of that Habsburg myth in Austrian literature described by Claudio Magris,21 also by conceiving what Burbank and Copper understand to be trajectories as legacies. Parallel world novels also often provide an occasion for an imperial reading, especially when they depict an alternative course of history. There, too, the empire is imagined in order to present a different idea of political order and, usually at the same time, to show its moments of crisis. The fact that the Nazi empire grew into an

Empire, in: Ders., Jason T. Eberl (eds.): Star Wars and Philosophy. More powerful than you can possibly imagine. Chicago/La Salle: Open Court 2005, ch. 14, pp. 168–180. 18  E.g. Asimov, Isaac: Die nackte Sonne [The naked sun, 1957]. Munich: Heyne Asimov 2019. 19  Kittler, Wolf: The Birth of the Partisan from the Spirit of Poetry. Heinrich von Kleist and the Strategy of the Wars of Liberation. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach Kittler 1987. 20  Previšić, Boris: “Es heiszt aber ganz Europa …” (The whole of Europe is called …). Imperial Legacies from Herder to Handke. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos 2017, p. 13. 21  Magris, Claudio: Il mito asburgico: nella letteratura austriaca moderna, Turin: Einaudi Magris 1963; dt. Fsg.: Der habsburgische Mythos in der österreichischen Literatur, Neuaufl. Vienna: Zsolnay 2000.

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empire as a result of winning a world war is not only played out by Philip K. Dick in his novel The Man in the High Castle (1962), but also, for example – thirty years later – by the thriller writer Robert Harris in his novel Fatherland (1992). The idea of a Nazi empire is also interesting for the present context because it expresses in a particularly drastic way the tension between a national or nationalist justification of the state and its imperial expression. This can be read as early as Alexandre Kojève’s reflections on the idea of empire: “It can be said that Germany lost this war because she wanted to win it as a nation-state.”22 By the way: The novel Fatherland is also the basis for the novel Faserland (1995) by Christian Kracht. In this respect, Faserland has been read for a subcutaneous Nazi substrate of post-war society in Germany. In fact, an imperial reading would also suggest itself, that is, a reading that pays attention to the extent to which the political order that provides the backdrop for the first-person narrator’s journey bears imperial traits, that is, to the extent to which power can operate via cultural trajectories. Interestingly, both of the authors mentioned, Kracht as well as Harris, later wrote novels that take up this question again in a very subtle way. At the least subtle are the titles of the novels that directly and explicitly call attention to or call for precisely such a reading. Both Kracht 2012 and Harris 2006 each write a novel titled Imperium, as different as they are in writing style and thrust. Kracht’s novel tells the story of August Engelhardt, a dropout and do-gooder who acquires a coconut plantation in German New Guinea before the First World War in order to realize (his) philosophy of life based on the idea that man should only eat coconuts, that the carnivore should become a cocovore. The history of his idea is over with the First World War, and in this respect it lends itself to reading his story as a mise en abyme of a German striving for hegemony that wants the world to ‘be healed by the German essence’ and thus underpins the imperial claim. After all, the novel is set mainly in German colonial territories. Kracht had already described an empire before, in 2008, in the novel I’ll be here in the sunshine and in the shade (Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten), a Soviet empire, albeit with Switzerland as its heartland. But the empire has crumbled. The natives of Africa, to whom the colonialists wanted to introduce the imperial Soviet culture with its civilising advances and achievements by building cities, have not accepted this culture. They returned to the wilderness. The novel ends with a haunting image. There, on the far periphery, where the culture of empire was supposed to reach, the architect of these cities hanged himself from a lamppost; wild animals eating his feet. Again, a parallel world novel that Dietmar Dath has compared, for example, and quite rightly, to Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle.23

 Kojève, Alexandre: Das lateinische Reich. Skizze einer Doktrin der französischen Politik, in: Tumult. Schriften zur Verkehrswissenschaft 15 (Kojève 1991), pp. 92–122, quote p. 95. 23  Dath, Dietmar: Ein schöner Albtraum ist sich selbst genug, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (15.10.2008). 22

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Harris’s novel, part of a trilogy, tells  – in the gesture of the American court series – the rise of a Roman orator and politician who sets out to infiltrate the Roman Republic ever further with rhetorical skill in order to realize a dictatorial and thus imperial power. Imperium as the title of the novel therefore alludes to the historical form and the historical model of empire as well as to the conceptual core, which is immediately given by the Latin term, and thus means precisely this position of power that empire presupposes. Well, we know this story, it is historically told by Caesar. Amazingly, however, the literary hero, a historically referential figure, is precisely the one we know from Latin class as the incorruptible advocate of the Republic (and Star Wars just repeats it: the Republic is the antithesis of the Empire): Marcus Tullius Cicero.24 In doing so, Harris creates a special punchline. He falls back on the historical paradigm with its narrative of a republic in transition to empire due to immanent reasons such as political, juridical and moral erosion in particular, but by exchanging the role of the actor of the republic’s enemy and dictator Caesar for the republic’s advocate Cicero, Harris succeeds in leaving the schema of the historical novel and instead draws attention to the empire as it appears in this novel, to the conceptual political and therefore actualizable dimension of the concept. He stages empire as a crisis-agnostic constellation of the Republic. By narrating Cicero’s rise in the gesture of an American lawyer series, Harris is able to demonstrate the internal erosion of the political system beyond historical hedging. On the basis of this extremely fruitful heuristic, the path could now be taken in the opposite direction. With a view to the examples, one could derive those structures as definienda of empire that are presented and problematized in the texts. First of all, it could be stated that empire is a political conception of order, which in turn is power-based. Empire manages to combine power and space. To do this, one must pay attention to some geopolitical conditioning factors. Power is one cohesive force among others. Power can still work where, for example, nationality can no longer work because different nations live under one political roof. If the nation is held together by nationality, the empire is held together by power. Following, but also departing from, Carl Schmitt’s reflections on Land and Sea (Land und Meer), I would assume that the paradigm of empire is a maritime empire.25 This may be historically wrong, but conceptually it is all the more meaningful. In this conception, the empire faces the task of maintaining power across a sea. The crucial question is how it succeeds in doing so. The next step, then, would be to conceive of the sea more abstractly, as a space across which there is neither a natural nor a cultural bridge. It would therefore have to be understood more as a semantic space. Only the empire builds this bridge and thereby becomes an empire. This can – geographically – also be the country with huge expanses. Colonialism would then only be an additional, geographically subordinate characteristic of empires, neither sufficient nor necessary. The question of how power can still reach where force may no longer reach is answered by the empire with its conception of political order and power to  Zierer, Otto: Cicero. Republikaner ohne Republik. Eine Biographie. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer 1983.  Schmitt, Carl: Land und Meer. Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung [1942]. Stuttgart: Klett-­ Cotta 2018; see also p. 6: “imperial expansion across land – not just seas”. 24 25

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rule. Power thus constitutes a space beyond territory and deterritorialization, beyond a center-periphery structure and yet more concrete than just a global order. Power operates as long as the promise of empire still holds: as a promise of justice, prosperity, or protection. Carl Schmitt defines empire as katechon, the upholder of the apocalypse; in a 1971 conversation he says, “‘to katechon’ is empire. And as long as empire is there, so long the world will not end.”26 Another interesting phenomenon now emerges here: In fact, the use of the term not only, but especially, in historical and political science, contrary to what its meaning suggests, seems to indicate precisely those situations in which political constellations enter into crisis, i.e. in which an empire perishes or another form of state and rule, e.g. a democratic republic, prepares to transform itself into an empire. The empire is in crisis (it is threatened with ruin), or the empire is the crisis (a crisis of the republic, which is heading for transformation into an empire). Here the transition between an analytical to a diagnostic usage becomes fluid. The fall of the empire thus becomes a fixed narrative – beyond ancient historical research – that can draw on the example of Edwards Gibbon’s monumental historical work The History of the Decline and the Fall of the Roman Empire (1776–1788).27 What is a tendential observation in the field of political science and history can be condensed into a historical thesis for the field of literary and media history. The concept of empire serves to diagnose a crisis, not only political, but especially social and cultural, where empires are disintegrating or republics are preparing to transform themselves into empires. I would like to conclude with one of the most impressive examples of recent years, even if it has only been perceived marginally from this perspective. Above all, it once again brings Europe centrally into focus. It concerns the novel Soumission (Eng: Subjugation) by Michel Houellebecq from 2015. The novel received highly problematic publicity on the day of its publication, which also steered its reading in the wrong direction. It was published on 7 January 2015, the very day twelve people were killed by Islamists in an attack on the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. Although the novel is set in the near future, in 2022, the political references to its present are legion. Marine Le Pen, the leader of a right-wing populist party, was campaigning when the book was published; in the book itself, however, she is campaigning again and has prospects of taking the presidency. But things turn out differently. Mohamed Ben Abbes, a Muslim politician, becomes president and transforms France into a Muslim republic, almost a god-state. Mohamed Ben Abbes – an artificial figure kat exochen, who has all three book religions (Islam, Judaism and Christianity) in his name and never appears directly.

 Schmitt, Carl: “Solange das Imperium da ist”. Carl Schmitt im Gespräch 1971, ed. by Frank Hertweck and Dimitros Kisoudis. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2010, p. 50. 27  Gibbon, Edward: Verfall und Untergang des römischen Imperiums bis zum Ende des Reiches im Westen [6 vols.] Munich: dtv 2003. As an example of this type of narrative: Gerhard and Nadja Simon: Verfall und Untergang des sowjetischen Imperiums. Munich: dtv 1993. On the Imperium Romanum see: Demandt, Alexander: Der Fall Roms. Die Auflösung des römischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt. Munich: C. H. Beck 1984. 26

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The novel tells the story of the literary historian François, who is not interested in politics but in the Decadence literary figure Joris-Karl Huysmans. He experiences France at a tipping point on the threshold of civil war, witnesses how his position at the university becomes uncertain, how his Jewish girlfriend has to leave the country with her family, and how, in his political disorientation, his virility also slackens. The novel refers – as it often does in the French cultural tradition – to the history of the Roman Republic, to models of civil war in this historical context, and especially to the historical tension between republic and empire. And this is where the second example of viewing Europe as an empire, announced at the beginning, comes into play. Stéphane Ratti, for example, has pointed out that Houellebecq’s novel depicts France in transition from a republic to a new empire,28 as described by the historian David Engels.29 Yes, you could say the novel follows Engels’ book like a blueprint. Engels’ punchline is to compare the current situation of the European Union with the Roman Republic at its end.30 Engelsʼ method is based on the ideas of Oswald Spengler (The Decline of the Occident, Vol. 1, 1918) (Der Untergang des Abendlandes), although he develops them further and makes them more sophisticated. Where Spengler speaks of homogeneity, Engels focuses more on cultural binding forces; where Spengler assumes a cyclical model, Engels focuses on historical analogy in the concrete and structurally conceived individual case. Yet in both authors there is a world-historically supported morphology that can in turn interpret history, much as Oswald Spengler programmatically put it in the preface to the second volume of The Decline of the Occident in 1922: “From Goethe I got the method, from Nietzsche the questions […].”31 Engelsʼ method insofar consists in a historical comparatism, more or less also based on morphology, which compares and superimposes different historical constellations in order to let them illuminate each other mutually with regard to developmental tendencies or laws. In doing so, he analyzes in particular a European identity problem in the light of the crisis symptomatology of the late Roman Republic. This state was forced by geopolitical expansion and the resulting complexity of the political system to act in a universalistic manner. It was therefore no longer able to specifically maintain a Roman identity.32 The consequence of this is the erosion, even fictionalization of the de jure republic in a de facto empire, in the principate of Augustus.33

 Ratti, Stéphane: Michel Houellebecq et lʼempereur Auguste: fiction ou réalité historique?, in: Le Figaro (16.01.2015). 29  German version: Engels, David: Auf dem Weg ins Imperium: Die Krise der Europäischen Union und der Untergang der Römischen Republik. Historische Parallelen. Berlin: Europa Verlag 2014. 30  Junge 2018. 31  Spengler, Oswald: Der Untergang des Abendlandes. Munich: dtv 1988, p. VI; see on this: Hildegard Kornhardt: Goethe und Spengler, in: Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 38 (June 1950), No. 4, pp. 589–596. 32  Engels 2014, p. 63 ff. 33  Engels 2014, p. 433 ff. 28

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Engels traces this transition to empire with his comparative method by tracing the systemic crisis of the European Union through central values and ideas of life and their erosion. It is not difficult to reconstruct the circumstances of Houellebecq’s hero as a phenomenology of value erosion, which ultimately amounts to the affirmation of one’s own virility and potency, but remains peculiarly passive where, for example, the exodus of his Jewish partner and her family is concerned. Houellebecq traces into the microstructure of the constitution of such an empire by showing how the empire can resolve and dissolve the individual man’s crisis of meaning. Engelsʼ reflections can be wonderfully flanked by the theses recently put forward by Dirk Jörke in his major essay The Size of Democracy (Die Größe der Demokratie).34 He looks at a “negative[ ] dialectic of size” or at the “negative[n] connection between size and democracy”, one could better speak of an indirect proportionality: His central thesis is that “the expansion of political-economic spaces is accompanied by a loss of democracy”.35 His case in point is primarily Europe or the European Union. It is remarkable that Jörke firstly makes geographical size a political factor and secondly that he always takes a negative view of the effects of the emergence of larger and larger political and economic spaces. Consequential costs are only ever accounted for negatively. With Engels, on the other hand, one could make the suggestion of a positive – in the logical, precisely non-judgmental sense – determination: The loss of democracy is accompanied by a tendency to establish imperial structures. Where geographical size changes from a quantitative to a qualitative factor, Europe emerges as an empire. It is therefore not at all surprising that Jörke locates the European primordial scene in the transition from one model of democracy or citizenship to another, namely in the transition from the Athenian polis, for which Aristotleʼs Politics serves him as a reference text, to the Roman Republic, for which Cicero’s De re publica serves him as a reference text.36 In doing so, he shows how Cicero’s model precisely has not allowed itself to be stabilized in political reality. If one reads Jörke and Engels together in this respect, it becomes apparent that the size of space could or even had to become the disposition of empire. And looking back at Harris’s novel, the choice of the historical reference figure Cicero may well be motivated: The diagnostician of the Republic becomes himself a symptom of what is being diagnosed: A crisis of the Republic and its model of citizenship in transition to empire. Such a quality of ‘geographical quantity’ is therefore also found in Houellebecq’s imagination. The France of his hero François is part of an empire that in turn encompasses the entire Mediterranean, which can therefore be seen as a translatio imperii, a restitution of the Roman Empire, which this time is not German like the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (Heilige römische Reich deutscher Nation),  Jörke, Dirk: Die Größe der Demokratie. Über die räumliche Dimension von Herrschaft und Partizipation. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2019. 35  Ibid., citations pp. 13, 16, 10. 36  Ibid., pp. 41–80, especially pp. 42–50. 34

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but French or even Arabic, but which is also sacred because only one religion knows how to provide the inner cohesive forces for such an empire and consequently the new values, but this time not Christian, but Islamic. The issue here is not Islam, but religion. If it is about Islam, then only in that context that makes clear that Islam is the only religion that can still have a political effect. But fundamentally it is about religion as an offer of meaning and identity, where ‘republican’ offers have eroded. This construction of Houellebecq’s has, to put it bluntly, nothing to do with Islamophobia; it is rather a literary experiment on the question of how democracies and republics come to their end, what inner dispositions must have developed in a society that one is prepared to give up a historical achievement and a republican constitution. It is part of Houellebecq’s literary method to make this symptomatology vivid in the all-encompassing, professional as well as sexual crisis of the middle-­aged and middle-positioned man. This type of character serves him as a litmus test for the larger political context. In this respect, Houellebecq’s political fiction has much more to do with the idea (or vision) of a Latin empire that Alexandre Kojève sketched out as a foreign policy advisor as early as 1945.37 In the spirit of Engels, Houellebecq’s novel shows how an empire might be able to compensate for the erosion of values in a national society with universalistic, transcendental, religious values (e.g. in marriage policy). The end of the novel suggests that the hero is persuaded to place himself at the disposal of the new state, and the professional, academic, financial, but also erotic advantages this would bring. France would then have lost its parliamentary democracy, but would have re-integrated its intellectual. François’s fate is exemplary for France, as his name suggests. Houellebecq’s novel is an impressive, but also just one example of how the idea, imagination and conception of empire in literature and the media serve to diagnose individual as well as social and fundamental – in the broadest sense of the word – political crises.

References Asimov, Isaac: Die nackte Sonne [The naked sun, 1957]. München: Heyne 2019. Baudrillard, Jean: Der symbolische Tausch und der Tod [1976]. München: Matthes & Seitz 1982. Burbank, Jane/Cooper, Frederick: Empires in world history. Power and the politics of difference. Princeton. Oxford: Princeton UP 2010. Darwin, John: Der imperiale Traum. Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus Verlag 2017. Dath, Dietmar: Ein schöner Albtraum ist sich selbst genug, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (15.10.2008). Decker, Kevin S.: By any means necessary: Tyranny, Democracy, Republic, and Empire, in: Ders., Jason T. Eberl (Hg.): Star Wars and Philosophy. More powerful than you can possibly imagine. Chicago/La Salle: Open Court 2005. Demandt, Alexander: Der Fall Roms. Die Auflösung des römischen Reiches im Urteil der Nachwelt. München: C. H. Beck 1984.

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Engels, David: Auf dem Weg ins Imperium: Die Krise der Europäischen Union und der Untergang der Römischen Republik. Historische Parallelen. Berlin: Europa Verlag 2014. Gerhard und Nadja Simon: Verfall und Untergang des sowjetischen Imperiums. München: dtv 1993. Gibbon, Edward: Verfall und Untergang des römischen Imperiums bis zum Ende des Reiches im Westen [6 Bde.]. München: dtv 2003. Hardt, Michael/Negri, Antonio: Empire. Die neue Weltordnung. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag 2002. Hausteiner, Eva Marlene: Greater than Rome. Neubestimmungen britischer Imperialität 1870–1914. Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus Verlag 2015. Heather, Peter: Invasion der Barbaren. Die Entstehung Europas im ersten Jahrtausend nach Christus. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 2011. Heather, Peter: Die Wiedergeburt Roms. Päpste, Herrscher und die Welt des Mittelalters. Übersetzt von Hans Freundl und Heike Schlatterer. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta 2014. Hildegard Kornhardt: Goethe und Spengler, in: Archiv für Rechts- und Sozialphilosophie 38 (Juni 1950), Nr. 4, S. 589–596. Huf, Hans-Christian: Imperium. Aufstieg und Fall großer Reiche. Berlin: Econ 2004. Huf, Hans-Christian: Imperium II. Aufstieg und Fall großer Reiche. Berlin: List 2006. Huhnholz, Sebastian: Krisenimperialität. Romreferenz im US-amerikanischen Empire-Diskurs. Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus Verlag 2014. Jörke, Dirk: Die Größe der Demokratie. Über die räumliche Dimension von Herrschaft und Partizipation. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2019. Junge, Oliver Jürgen: Imperium. Die Rechtsnatur der Europäischen Union im Vergleich mit imperialen Ordnungen vom Römischen bis zum Britischen Reich. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck 2018. Kittler, Wolf: Die Geburt des Partisanen aus dem Geist der Poesie. Heinrich von Kleist und die Strategie der Befreiungskriege. Freiburg im Breisgau: Rombach 1987. Koselleck, Reinhart: Zur historisch-politischen Semantik asymmetrischer Gegenbegriffe, in: Ders. (Hg.): Vergangene Zukunft. Zur Semantik geschichtlicher Zeiten. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1989, S. 211–259. Kojève, Alexandre: Das lateinische Reich. Skizze einer Doktrin der französischen Politik, in: Tumult. Schriften zur Verkehrswissenschaft 15 (1991), S. 92–122. Leitner, Ulrich: Imperium. Geschichte und Theorie eines politischen Systems. Frankfurt a.M.: Campus Verlag 2011. Leutner, Mechthild/Mühlhahn, Klaus (Hg.): Kolonialkrieg in China. Die Niederschlagung der Boxerbewegung 1900–1901. Berlin: Christoph Links Verlag 2007. Magris, Claudio: Il mito asburgico: nella letteratura austriaca moderna, Turin: Einaudi 1963. Münkler, Herfried: Imperien. Die Logik der Weltherrschaft – vom alten Rom bis zu den Vereinigten Staaten. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt 2005. Münkler, Herfried: Translation, Filiation und Analogiebildung: Politische Legitimation und strategische Reflexion im Spiegel vergangener Imperien, in: Ders., Eva Marlene Hausteiner (Hg.): Die Legitimation von Imperien. Strategien und Motive im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt a.M./New York: Campus Verlag 2012, S. 34–69. Previšić, Boris: „Es heiszt aber ganz Europa…“ Imperiale Vermächtnisse von Herder bis Handke. Berlin: Kulturverlag Kadmos 2017. Ratti, Stéphane: Michel Houellebecq et lʼempereur Auguste: fiction ou réalité historique?, in: Le Figaro (16.01.2015). Scheidel, Walter (Hg.): Rome and China. Comparative Perspectives on Ancient World Empires. Oxford Studies in Early Empires. Oxford/New York: Oxford UP 2009. Schmitt, Carl: „Solange das Imperium da ist“. Carl Schmitt im Gespräch 1971, hg. von Frank Hertweck und Dimitros Kisoudis. Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2010.

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Schmitt, Carl: Land und Meer. Eine weltgeschichtliche Betrachtung [1942]. Stuttgart: Klett-­ Cotta 2018. Spengler, Oswald: Der Untergang des Abendlandes. München: dtv 1988. Teggart, Frederick J.: Rome and China, Berkeley: University of California Press 1939. Tollen, David W.: Star Wars and History: Roman Republic and Empire, URL: https://pintsofhistory.com/2016/01/17/star-­wars-­and-­history-­roman-­republic-­and-­empire/ (zuletzt abgerufen am 6.6.2020). Zierer, Otto: Cicero. Republikaner ohne Republik. Eine Biographie. Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer 1983.

Political Particularism and the European Public Sphere Anthologies on the Theme of Europe Ulrike Zitzlsperger

In March 2018, two years after the United Kingdom’s referendum on the country’s remaining in the European Union, the anthology My Europe was published, a collection of prose, poems and specialist articles.1 Trigger for the edition was the result of the referendum: Brexit and the new relationship between the UK and Europe for the foreseeable future. However, the anthology also reflects the far-reaching uncertainty and profound conflicts that have defined public and private discourse ever since. The edition blurs the boundaries between the European Union and, much more vaguely but with positive associations, the continent of Europe. For political-­ economic as well as cultural-historical themes family stories (for example, Cecilia Hall: My European Family) are repeatedly brought into play in the anthology as a means of communicating dilemmas. Reference is made to Boris Johnson as a key figure (for example Maurizio Ascari: Sell your Past and Buy Yourself a Future!), who became prime minister three years after the referendum. It is also clear from the collection that, with Brexit, reflection on the UK’s and Europe’s status quo has become imperative on a wide variety of topics.2 One aspect of the debate takes a remarkably subordinate position in the anthology: the historical dimension of Europe, not to mention the considerations that had contributed to the development of the continent’s political unity, especially after 1945. Winston Churchill’s call for “Europe Unite” in The Hague in 1948 plays no  Johnson, Anna/Vaught, Anna (eds.): My Europe, Manningtree: Patrician Press 2018.  The growing number of popular introductions to the subject of Europe is not surprising in this context. Cf. for example on the British book market: Jenkins, Simon: A Short History of Europe. From Pericles to Putin. London: Viking 2018 and Field, Jacob F.: The History of Europe in Bite-­ Sized Chunks. Croydon: Michael O’Mara Books 2019. In Germany “The Europe Saga” as part of the series Terra X was broadcast in 2017. 1 2

U. Zitzlsperger (*) College of Humanities, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_6

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role in collective and media memory, despite his prominent role in Britain. Instead, the critically perceived omnipresence of the memory of the Empire comes to the fore – a positively connoted time as a world power and associated with a nostalgia that then proves unsuitable for future considerations. Uwe Derksen concludes by comparing Europe and Great Britain: The idea of Europe and Britain’s role within it has a long history […, it] is rooted in a scenario in which a great political union of power gradually loses ground on the world stage because it is reluctant or unwilling to become part of another kind of union. […] The narrative of being the imperial standard bearer in the world and not just Europe is deeply ingrained across the social and political spectrum and indeed British culture.3

My Europe is an attempt to respond to a situation that is both complex and unexpected. The recourse to the anthology as a means of discussion is of interest because the focal points of the content as well as significant omissions reflect patterns of perception. But how does thinking about Europe take shape when, beyond the acute crisis, European culture comes to the fore? The following analysis of a number of contemporary anthologies is preceded by reflections on their impact in general, in order to frame the limits and possibilities of such publications. The aim of this contribution is then to examine which cultural-historical themes of anthologies published in the German-speaking world since 2012 come to the fore in fictional and journalistic texts. Other publications will be cross-referenced whenever they raise fundamental concerns on the subject of Europe more precisely.

1 Anthologies as a Means of Debate and Cultural Engagement Anthologies benefit from their variety of perspectives on a topic  – the scope of which is also revealed in the introductions to the respective issues. Editors usually draw on a network of contacts before expanding the circle of contributors. The selection of these contributors is important: is the focus on unknowns, or do renowned authors contribute, possibly repeatedly, to this and similar debates? Do the majority of authors belong to a particular generation whose ideas are based on formative historical and thus biographically binding moments? No less important are the demands that editors make: Should texts be new and is a specific starting point given to all authors? Titles are programmatic – My Europe, for example, points to the fact that personal considerations and points of view come into play. Furthermore, the respective situations that encourage the publication of anthologies are revealing. For example, the number of anthologies published in Berlin after the fall of the Wall in 1989 and the reunification of Germany in 1990 was significant: old and new literary circles were consulted. Certain themes – such as the development of the inner-city terra incognita that still existed in the 1990s – were explored. The old was compared with  Derksen, Uwe: In Answer, in Johnson, Vaught 2018, pp. 731–795, here: S. 781 f.

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the new. Some contributions belonged to the existing canon of Berlin literature and had already appeared in previous anthologies, others were directly tailored to the new situation. In this way, a narrative emerged that contributed to the characterization of Berlin’s transitional period.4 The number of publications confirmed the need for debate. In addition to taking stock, anthologies can also become transnational points of reference. Margaret Busby, for example, writes in retrospect about her anthology Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Writing by Women of African Descent: “It was critically acclaimed, but more significant has been the inspiration that 1992 anthology gave to a fresh generation of writers.”5 Readers of the volume recall in this essay that the anthology, with over 200 chronologically arranged texts, not only broadened the range of African women writers to be discovered, but encouraged them to make their voices heard. The South African writer Philippa Yaa de Villiers emphasizes the significance of this anthology: “Daughters of Africa was among those works that replenished our starved minds.”6 In this respect, the anthology also shaped the self-perception of a new generation – in Africa and beyond. Ideally, anthologies allow for a point of reference that then becomes the occasion for broader cultural engagements. In Sweet are the Uses of Anthology, the Argentine-Canadian author Albert Manguel states7 that anthologies bring together what originally could not be brought to a common denominator. This can be argued, for example, for Herbert Günther’s 1929 collection Here writes Berlin (Hier schreibt Berlin): The authors Günther assembled helped to ensure that the anthology, carefully structured, presented Berlin as a multi-layered metropolis precisely because of their contradictory approaches. Looking back in 1963, Günther commented in an epilogue that this “self-portrayal of Berlin” had been “a symphony of dissonance”.8 The potential explosiveness of such a volume is underscored by the fact that Hier schreibt Berlin was among the publications that the National Socialists sought to eradicate by burning them on Opernplatz in Berlin and elsewhere in 1933. Ultimately, this decision confirmed that Günther, with the help of his authors, had made 1920s Berlin an unwelcome  Cf. for example: Arnold, Sven/Janetzki, Ulrich (eds.): Berlin zum Beispiel: Geschichten aus der Stadt. Munich: Ullstein 1997; Becker, Jürgen/Janetzki, Ulrich (eds.): Die Stadt nach der Mauer: Junge Autoren schreiben über ihr Berlin. Berlin: Ullstein 1998 (Janetzki is also a contributor to one of the Europe anthologies); Lange-Müller, Katja (ed.): Bahnhof Berlin. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 1997. On the subject of Berlin anthologies, see also Zitzlsperger, Ulrike: Guides to the City: Berlin Anthologies, in Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature 28 (2004), pp. 96–125. 5  Busby, Albert Margaret: The New Daughters, in The Guardian (9 Mar. 2019), URL: https://www. theguardian.com/books/2019/mar/09/from-ayobami-adebayo-to-zadie-smith-meet-the-new-­ daughters-of-africa (last accessed 6 Jun. 2020). 6  Ibid. 7  Manguel, Albert: Sweet are the Uses of Anthology, in: New  York Times (23.8.1987), URL: https://www.nytimes.com/1987/08/23/books/sweet-are-the-uses-of-anthology.html (last accessed 6.6.2020). 8  Günther, Herbert (ed.): Hier schreibt Berlin. Eine Anthologie [1929]. Berlin: Ullstein 1998, p. 329. 4

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political issue. Anthologies, precisely because of their timely subject matter and the influence of individual contributors, have the potential to create a lasting impact on public discourse. Alongside such politicizations there is the attempt to consciously counteract the depoliticization of a certain situation by means of the anthology. In the introduction to From the Heart of Europe: Anthology of Contemporary Slovenian Writing, editor Matej Bogataj argues that in Slovenia’s case, the European consensus and the accompanying democratization of the country have turned national literature back on itself because, unlike in the pre-European past, literary visions no longer need to be politically connoted.9 Here the anthology strives to open up a new audience for literature, to bring its diversity and relevance into the light once again. It becomes clear that anthologies often respond to a socio-political and cultural disposition for which there is a need for clarification without striving for consensus. In Enraged Citizens, European Peace and Democratic Deficits (Der Europäische Landbote), an acclaimed contribution on the subject of the European Union, Robert Menasse diagnosed in 2012 that current European politics are characterized by a transitional generation.10 In this respect, it seems logical that the same decade saw an increase in anthologies calling for a renewed engagement with the subject of Europe. Three German editions, for which authors from across the borders were asked to contribute, are therefore to be given special consideration here. The focus is primarily on contributions that are autobiographically motivated or that deal with specific locations, because in this way it is easier to understand the approach to key themes.

2 In Search of an European Status Quo Hotel Europa was published in 2012; the editors are the Swiss literary scholar, author and translator Ilma Rakusa and the former cultural officer of the Goethe Institute, Michael M. Thoss.11 The 14 contributions by renowned authors with photographs by Matthias Hoch share the same starting point: the authors were asked to look for a hotel called Europe in the European country of their choice; some responses – for example by Tanja Dückers from Cyprus – are reportages, others, such as Ingo Schulze’s and Christine Traber’s from Iceland,12 are fictions. The compilation of the texts is described as “bricolage”; “narratives interweave personal

 Bogataj, Matej: Introduction, in: From the Heart of Europe: Anthology of Contemporary Slovenian Writing. Norman/OK: Texture Press 2007, p. 13. 10  Menasse, Robert: Der europäische Landbote. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag 2017, p. 100. 11  Rakusa, Ilma/Thoss, Michael M. (eds.): Hotel Europa, Heidelberg: Das Wunderhorn 2012. 12  Schulze, Ingo/Traber, Christine: Hotel Chomsky, in: Ilma Rakusa, Michael Thoss 2012, pp. 183–194. The contribution describes the hoped-for encounter with the linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky, whereby parallels with Samuel Beckett’s En attendant Godot suggest themselves. Chomsky has commented on the status quo of Europe in various contributions. 9

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stories with historical events, ancient myths with social utopias […]. Perhaps one day the grand narrative of Europe will emerge from this.”13 The association of Europe with a hotel is programmatic. The coexistence under one roof alludes to the binding nature of easily comprehensible orders: the administration of the house at the reception on the one hand, the privacy within the rooms on the other. Some of the hotels have a distinct history, for others the name ‘Europa’ is coincidental. The title also brings into play the memory of slogans that characterized Europe, especially during its expansion in the 1980s: In the past, there was talk of a “shared house” and life under “one roof”;14 this architecture of Europe conveyed a potential feasibility and control.15 A volume edited by editor and program curator Thomas Geiger, Caprioles. A Literary Journey Through Europe (Luftsprünge. Eine literarische Reise durch Europa), lacks this precise level of comparison. Here, over 30 authors from as many European countries are represented. Europe is defined geographically, culturally, and politically in the introduction. Here the significance of 1989 and the “fall of the Iron Curtain” are highlighted in the preface.16 The selection is deliberately subjective, the emphasis of the anthology being on its “reader’s book” quality.17 In contrast to the space-oriented approach in Hotel Europa, the history of the continent is oriented here to historical turning points. In 2016 the author Uwe Beyer edited Europe in Words. A Literary Seismography in Sixteen Essays (Europa im Wort. Eine literarische Seismographie in sechzehn Aufzeichnungen). In the preface, Beyer observes that, in view of fragile internal links, Europe needs to be recognized as a “community of values”.18 The authors from eight countries were therefore asked to contribute “descriptive texts” in order to make “Europe visible”.19 These texts reflect above all personal experiences  – among them, in the year of the anthology’s creation no coincidence, also that of migration.20 The preface refers to tensions that characterize Europe. Drawing on  Thoss, Michael M.: Hotel Europa – Auf dem Weg zum europäischen Haus?, in: Ilma Rakusa, Michael Thoss 2012, pp. 5–8, here: p. 7. 14  Cf. on the idea of the European house also Žanić, Ivo: Die Poetik der Grenze: Fallbeispiel Kroatien, in: Dževad Karahasan/Markus Jaroschka (eds.): Poetik der Grenze. Über die Grenzen sprechen – Literarische Brücken für Europa, Graz: Steirische Verlagsanstalt 2003, pp. 222–234. 15  The novel Grand Hotel Europe specifically takes up the metaphor of the hotel, whereby the reference to a grand hotel then also brings into play the counterproductive nostalgia for outdated ways of life. Cf. Pfeijffer, Ilja Leonard: Grand Hotel Europe. Amsterdam: De Arbeiderspers 2018. 16  Geiger, Thomas (ed.): Luftsprünge. Eine literarische Reise durch Europa. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuch Verlag 2015, p. 11. 17  Ibid. 18  Beyer, Uwe (ed.): Europa im Wort. Eine literarische Seismographie in sechzehn Aufzeichnungen. Heidelberg: Lesezeiten 2016, p. 7. 19  Ibid., p. 8. 20  On this topic, see also Brinker-Gabler, Gisela/Shea, Nicole (eds.): The Many Voices of Europe. Mobility and Migration in Contemporary Europe. Berlin, Boston: De Gruyter 2020 and here especially the chapters ‘Reconfiguration of Identities’ and ‘Shifting Frontiers of National Belonging’, which among other things deal with the need for diversity. 13

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­ ythology, Europa is portrayed as a “survivor,” despite the seduction by Zeus.21 The m drawings by Christiane Maria Luti, which accompany the volume, play on this theme: “Europa’s Gaze” shows the young woman at the beginning with the bull; in conclusion (“Relaunch  – Europe?”) a mature Europa sits waiting on a sofa. The preface highlights contradictions that make up Europe today  – it differentiates between Europe and the European Union, between a “fabric of peace between its nations, guaranteed human rights and personal freedoms”, which is, however, also endangered by social and territorial conflicts.22 With the crisis as a starting point, the meaning of an “European civil society” is questioned along with its “perception and appreciation deficit”.23 Here, then, the demands of political and economic unity come more to the fore. What all three anthologies have in common, despite such different starting points, is that literature is given a special place in the search for the European status quo. It is noteworthy that the majority of contributors focus on a specific country – cross-border, comparative contributions are rare.24 Europe in Words (Europa im Wort) was included by the Federal Agency for Civic Education in its publication series and benefited from a number of book presentations; Luftsprünge was discussed with the editor on Austrian Radio in May 2015 and featured in reviews. This suggests that the desire for a current European debate, including the continent’s culture, is finding an audience.

3 Cultural Assets, Borders, Peripheries, Centres and the Past For Joachim Sartorius in Hotel Europa the choice of a location falls on Sarajevo, capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Sartorius was the long-time director of the Berlin Artists’ Programme of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and artistic director of the Berliner Festspiele. In “Panorama of Mutilated Happiness” (Panorama des versehrten Glücks), he combines city walks with the insights of local friends and acquaintances, including the Bosnian author Dzevad Karahasan, for whom Sarajevo is “at once the edge and the heart of Europe”.25 Sartorius is not the only one to seek out conversation in the place of his choice  – Ilma Rakusa, for example, repeatedly seeks advice from friends and colleagues in St. Petersburg where she compares the luxury of the Europejskaja with the restrictions of earlier stays.26 “Intellectuals,” writes Jürgen Habermas in Oh, Europe (Ach, Europa), a  Ibid., p. 6.  Ibid., p. 7. 23  Ibid., p. 7. 24  For Luftsprünge, however, it should be noted that its authors are active in different countries. 25  Sartorius, Joachim: Panorama des versehrten Glücks, in: Ilma Rakusa, Michael Thoss 2012, pp. 151–164, here: p. 152. Karahasan has also contributed to the anthology Luftsprünge, in which he negotiates the particularities of his hometown. 26  Rakusa, Ilma: Fast unwirklich – das Evropejskaja und St. Petersburgs weisse Nächte, in: Ilma Rakusa, Michael Thoss 2012, pp. 139–150. 21 22

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sequence of essays that specifically references Hans Magnus Enzensberger’s 1987 “Canticle for European Diversity” (Lobgesang auf die europäische Vielfalt), “have a flair for relevance” – uncovering such relevance is the ideal of an anthology. And indeed the contributors to the anthology deliberately network themselves, thus allowing a response to a desideratum that Habermas puts forward: Drawing on Structural Change in the Public Sphere (Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit) (1962), he complains that there is currently no “European public sphere.”27 Such a European public sphere is called upon to raise the “European issue” to the detriment of national agendas.28 This demand coincides with Menasse’s observation that discussions do “not capture the public discourse.” This is aggravated by the fact that all things cultural have such a “low standing” in the European Union.29 In the introduction to the anthology Luftsprünge, Thomas Geiger reflects accordingly: “Journalism essentially operates from a national perspective. The role of culture is undervalued in the European discussion – for, apart from sheer economic potency, culture is the real asset of Europeans.”30 What proves constructive in Hotel Europa is that the contributors are forced by their travels into the position of observers. It is fitting when Sartorius reports, in view of the destroyed library in Sarajevo that “The EU has held out the prospect of funds to rebuild a library, but the city fathers and politicians are in complete disagreement about its future use.”31 Europe “on the ground”, as is repeatedly made clear in the contributions, has little to do with the administrative centre of Europe. For Sartorius then, a genuinely multicultural Europe is a failed project of the past, the Habsburg Empire: “At the intersection of two cultural orbits, a traditional one oriented toward Instanbul and a European and ‘modern’ one that came from Vienna.”32 Sarajevo, in turn, is a focal point of such contexts that have long since become redundant and are part of Europe’s cultural memory. Sartorius designs, since “this Sarajevo no longer exists,” his “imaginary Europe,”33 which is specifically oriented toward the past and for which nostalgia comes into play. The present meanwhile, is taken over by the consequences of the war, which are visible everywhere. While Sarajevo represents itself on the one hand as the centre of a past Europe of successful co-existence, Sartorius at the same time locates it on the edge of the continent. His imaginary Europe contrasts with the interpretation of those contributions in My Europe that point to the omnipresence of imperial ideas. The historical context inspires Sartorius’s imagination; it becomes more difficult, as Uwe Derksen shows, when it obscures the view of political reality. The differentiation between the periphery and the centre of Europe repeatedly comes to the fore in the contributions: spatial structures reveal existing and missing  Habermas, Jürgen: Ach, Europa. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag 2008, p. 7 and p. 84.  Ibid., p. 90. 29  Menasse 2017, pp. 95 and 78. 30  Geiger 2015, p. 10. 31  Sartorius 2012, p. 157. 32  Ibid. 33  Ibid., p. 162. 27 28

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connections. Considerations of the periphery have a long tradition. In Ach Europa! Hans Magnus Enzensberger deliberately avoided a “central perspective” as early as 1987, instead looking at Europe from Sweden, Italy, Hungary, Portugal, Norway, Poland and Spain.34 The journey to the East becomes, then as now, a self-affirmation by Western European visitors that they have progressed more rapidly. A quarter of a century after Enzensberger’s observations, Ulrich Janetzki, director of the Literary Colloquium in Berlin, concludes in a comparable way in his contribution to Hotel Europa in the Carpathians: “Medzilaborce, that is Europe on the edge of a plate. And one’s food is always cooler at the edge of a plate. The big lumps of the dish are in the middle anyway. And yet you always start eating from the edge.”35 Alex Popov, who in “Die Hotels der Geschichte” (History’s Hotels) chooses his Hotel Europe in the Vatican City State, goes a step further when he directs the “central perspective” not to states but to political enclaves that seem to embody the idea of Europe: Somewhere in the middle of the road between heavenly kingdom and communist paradise lies the EU. […] Although it looks impressive on the map, the EU remains rather a virtual projection of the idea of Europe, beneath the surface of which still lies the puzzle of individual nation states. The real space of the EU is actually concentrated in a few small enclaves  – in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg, where its essential institutions are located.36

It is remarkable that the reality of Europe seems to be tied to institutions, but these are not considered further. Enzensberger had anticipated the focus on nation-state preferences. Ach Europa! concludes with an epilogue, a fictional journalistic piece in The New Yorker of 21 February 2006, in which the correspondent reports from a Berlin in which preservationists are erecting shelters over the remnants of the Wall, only to conclude that small-stateism is a European phenomenon and that only France swears by centralism.37 In this respect, a structural decision in Luftsprünge is programmatic: the editor arranges his texts alphabetically by country of origin – “questions such as where Eastern Europe begins and Central Europe ends are thus sidestepped.”38 Sartorius’s interlocutor, Dzevad Karahasan, in Poetics of the Border (Poetik der Grenze), emphasizes the potential of the multiplicity of states, especially with regard to Europe, and reconceptualizes the potential problem in favor of diversity. Borders, Karahasan argues, are sites of tension, and this tension in turn proves

 Enzensberger, Hans Magnus: Ach Europa! Wahrnehmungen aus sieben Ländern. Mit einem Epilog aus dem Jahre 2006. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 1987. 35  Janetzki, Ulrich: Eurohotel Medzilaborce, in Ilma Rakusa, Michael Thoss 2012, pp.  57–66, here: S. 65. 36  Popov, Alek: Die Hotels der Geschichte: vom Vatikan nach Brüssel, in Ilma Rakusa, Michael Thoss 2012, pp. 125–138, here: p. 133. 37  Enzensberger 1987, p. 473. 38  Geiger 2015, p. 12. 34

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productive: “In the border, through the border, an identity is completed.”39 Europe, he says, presents itself as a “very dense network of borders,” especially in Central Europe. Karahasan is not interested in state borders, however, but in “cultural borders, borders that give shape and form to cultural structures, that embody the experience of the world, everyday rituals, and the relationship with the community.”40 An understanding of such borders proves here to be a prerequisite for the functioning of Europe, since the moment they are acknowledged, their productive dissolution begins. Instead, in the anthologies, the location of Europe is oriented not only towards an attempt to position it in relation to the rest of the continent (on the edge, in the middle), but also towards an emphasis on local particularism, which gives rise to new demarcations. The addition of a photo essay to the Hotel Europa anthology is all the more productive. Photographic stocktaking flourishes in times of transition, in which the old (here: the nation states) is no longer valid, but the new (here: a functioning Europe) has not yet asserted itself. The visualization of transition questions familiar patterns of perception and representation. Matthias Hoch specializes in capturing urban situations that defy precise definition – the effect is in marked contrast to the texts in the volume. For Copenhagen, Lisbon, Belfast and Marseilles, public transport comes to the fore, post-war housing estates, non-descript green spaces, banal places of pleasure where people are secondary. The photo essays refer to unspectacular situations that are the same everywhere and in this way bring another Europe into focus, in which everyday structures become the decisive feature. The productive handling of a common middle, on the other hand – the consensus on what might constitute Europe – proves more difficult. In “A Central European Love” (Eine Mitteleuropäische Liebe) Tymofij Havryliv observes on historical attempts at rapprochement: Central Europe is reminiscent of a round dance that incorporates elements of the polka and the csárdás, the ciocărlia and the husitschka, the koletschko and the kolomyjka, and essentially consists of the dancers dancing towards each other from different corners of the demarcated space, towards the golden centre, towards a single point, in media res, but abruptly changing their direction as soon as they threaten to meet and cross, in order to dance in the opposite direction, back to their starting positions.41

Hoch, meanwhile, deliberately avoids relating spaces to one another in his photographs; their consideration points to the difficulty of creating a consensus that exists in everyday life. However, everyday life not only comes to the fore in the photographs, but is also the basis of the description of a transnational togetherness. In Europa im Wort, historian Karl Schlögel counters the fears that can attach themselves to spatial  Karahasan, Dzevad: Zur Grenze, in Dzevad Karahasan, MarkusJaroschka 2013, pp.  10–14, here: p. 11. 40  Ibid., p. 12. 41  Havryliv, Tymofij: Eine Mitteleuropäische Liebe, in: Dzevad Karahasan, Markus Jaroschka 2013, pp. 208–214, here: p. 211. 39

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perceptions with a thesis: “There is a Europe that is intact and functioning, but which does not appear in the whole discourse of crisis.”42 For him at so-called “measuring stations” everyday life runs smoothly: at border crossings, in light of the schedules of European bus companies, the successes of the diverse festival and cultural scene  – “those currents, in other words, that hold Europe together.” He concludes, “There will be no truly European narrative until something like a European horizon of experience has emerged.”43 The narrative of Europe is bound not to strive for the one abstract binding force, but to make visible everyday connections. Other contributions in Europa im Wort take into account the recent refugee crisis, which has proven to be more divisive than unifying within Europe. Here, however, the external perception is instructive for the perception of the political dimension of the Union: for the refugees, Europe is initially an aspiration, a hope, a space of possibility. In reality, however, Europe – detached from historical contexts and turning points – is a place of exclusion: seen from the outside, Fortress Europe is a deterrent entity and fundamentally inaccessible to immigrants. In this context, not only state borders become insurmountable, but also the culture of the continent. In view of increasingly nationalistic voices, the Berlin author Tanja Dückers, who has also contributed to Hotel Europa, demands in Europa im Wort following the sociologist Ulrich Beck and with parallels to Rosa Braidotti’s Nomadic Theory that a “nomadic transnationalism” is a necessity: “Europe can only conceive of itself as a lively, restless marketplace of the world, as a multi-ethnic state. […] The European, if he allows this openness in himself […] is then by birth a multiculturalist.”44 This means that questions of belonging must be redefined and existing norms questioned; here the division of Europe according to certain spaces no longer plays a role – with more openness a change of perception takes place. Like Schlögel, however, Dückers brings another point into play, that of identity-­ forming historical experiences. Dückers herself is engaged in explaining the fall of the Wall to schoolchildren. The European dimension proves to be wider-reaching: The common experience of the First and Second World Wars and the Holocaust are formative collective experiences for all Europeans. The bipolar world order during the Cold War was also experienced and suffered, albeit in different ways, by Western, Central and Eastern Europeans. The same applies to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the abolition of the dividing line that ran through Europe.45

Adolf Muschg formulates something similar in “Europe … is the subsistence level of the alliance already too demanding?” (Europa … ist das Existenzminimum des Bündnisses schon zu anspruchsvoll?). He argues with the help of his own life story

 Schlögel, Karl: Einen Karlspreis für Eurolines, in: Beyer 2016, pp. 19–35, here: p. 21.  Ibid., p. 28. 44  Dückers, Tanja: Europa  – eine transnationale Heimat, in Ilma Rakusa, Michael Thoss 2012, pp. 173–182, here: p. 178. 45  Ibid., p. 181. 42 43

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and the consequences drawn from it. It is an important nuance that Muschg highlights the suffering of the people, not just the historical facts: Europe is not yet a state, it is by no means an article of faith, but neither is it merely a free trade zone. It is a union of father- and motherlands that have had to experience the bankruptcy of nationalist claims, embodied in two world civil wars, and, what is more, acknowledge their responsibility for it.46

For Muschg, Europe becomes a reality precisely because it is not just a construct, but shapes the lives of its citizens. Peter Härtling, too, observes in view of his own history as a refugee that those overly concerned about the status quo “fall ignorantly out of the history of this old continent.”47 Part of the experience of everyday life in Europe is the freedom to travel. The authors of the anthology Hotel Europa are, by the very nature of their task, all tourists who have to discover the place of their choice. This tourist gaze allows for a further nuance in the perception of Europe that emphasizes places, but above all the relationship between Europe’s past and its open future. Sartorius mentions in his contribution a postcard with four segments showing the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife in 1914, the Olympic Games in 1984 and impressions of the war in former Yugoslavia. The last segment postulates “no problem” and shows Sarajevo with symbols of peace, doves and flowers.48 This may be inappropriate in light of history, but postcards oriented towards mass consumption dissolve historical reality in favour of an image that projects wishful thinking, especially in regard to historical contexts. In “Europa Veneziana or The Journey into the Future” (Europa Veneziana oder die Reise in die Zukunft), Julia Schoch registers the signs of decay of the “tired city” and the “tired hotel”49 in Venice. In comparison, local tourism proves to be a dynamic that ensures the survival of the region. Sarajevo and Venice are destinations hardly associated with “Europe”, but they promise authentic historical and cultural experiences. The asset of both cities is their past – which requires careful handling. In fact, in both contributions the hotels become barometers of the omnipresent decay. In 1999, ten years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and nine years after the reunification of Germany, the weekly newspaper Die Zeit published a special issue entitled Zwischen Berlin und Brüssel (Between Berlin and Brussels) (4/99). Here, too, journalists, historians and writers (including Klaus Hartung, Heinrich August Winkler, Peter Esterhazy, Martin Walser and Fritz Stern) were invited to search for the meaning of Europe, especially in light of the refugee crisis and the discussion about Fortress Europe, which was also topical at the time. Twenty years ago, Martin

 Muschg, Adolf: Europa … ist das Existenzminimum des Bündnisses schon zu anspruchsvoll? in: Rakusa Ilma, Michael M. Thoss 2012, pp. 226–241, here: p. 234. 47  Härtling, Peter: Mein Europa, in Rakusa Ilma, Michael M. Thoss 2012, pp. 14–18, here: p. 15. 48  Sartorius 2012, p. 151. 49  Schoch, Julia: Europa Veneziana oder die Reise in die Zukunft, in Ilma Rakusa, Michael Thoss 2012, pp. 165–181, here: p. 168. 46

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Klingst concluded: “When two people say Europe, they don’t mean the same thing;”50 so the need for discourse and, time and again, for taking stock remains. The anthologies discussed here exemplify that Europe is in need of reconsideration of certain themes at regular intervals and especially in times of upheaval. The continent of Europe proves to be a valued space of experience, while the European Union is perceived as an abstract bureaucracy and is hardly mentioned. The – hardly ever more precisely defined – centre of Europe is confronted with an eastern edge that needs to be tapped. What the centre and the east of Europe seem to have in common is that here a historical experience presents itself as a strong motivation for cohesion, while images of Europe as a home or a family hardly play a role anymore. Instead, the creative handling of borders and everyday experiences take centre stage. The question of values and standards is characteristic in that Europe must always be redefined – but the idea of Europe, the ideal of the community of states, is never in question. It is striking that Western Europe plays a subordinate role in the anthologies at hand – clearly, certain European contexts remain unconsidered. Other omissions are also revealing: the introduction of the euro, for example, is not a significant part of the post-war chronology, regardless of which generation the authors belong to; regional identities only play a role in the context of conflicts; for the question of the extent to which Europe is defined as a homeland, deliberations – for example by Dückers – have only just begun. In a review in January 2019, Lothar Schröder argued that Menasse’s novel Die Hauptstadt “tells us about Europe, its origins and its future”.51 The editors of the anthologies dedicated to Europe go further: They activate the intellectual European public sphere of overlapping networks and the most diverse cultural enterprises called for by Habermas. This is of minor concern in the anthology from the UK mentioned at the beginning, My Europe. Here, the experiential dimension of the twentieth century emphasized by Dückers, including two world wars, the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall, plays no role. Instead, significantly, family images come back into play: the memory of migration stories, the comparison of Brexit with broken families threatened by divorce, or the loss of a familiar home that one has allowed to be taken away under false pretences. My Europe lacks a sustained claim to transnational approaches. The European narrative in the second decade of the twenty-first century is, the anthologies suggest, tied to central European and cultural-historical contexts. The peripheries of East and West prove challenging. In the future, when the consequences of the Corona Virus and the war in Ukraine will be more accurately assessable, an anthology on the theme of Europe will have to face new challenges: as before, in relation to the number of refugees arriving, then the question of Europe as a homeland, but also the issue of borders in times of crisis.

 Klingst, Martin: Die Mauerbrecher, in: ZeitPunkte (4/99), S. 70.  URL: https://rp-online.de/kultur/fadenscheinige-kritik-an-robert-menasse-und-seinen-­roman_ aid-­35550831 (last accessed 06/06/2020). 50 51

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Schlögel, Karl: Einen Karlspreis für Eurolines, in: Beyer 2016, pp. 19–35. Schulze, Ingo/Traber, Christine: Hotel Chomsky, in: Ilma Rakusa, Michael Thoss 2012, pp. 183–194. Thoss, Michael M.: Hotel Europa  – Auf dem Weg zum europäischen Haus?, in: Ilma Rakusa, Michael Thoss 2012, pp. 5–8. Zitzlsperger, Ulrike: Guides to the City: Berlin Anthologies, in: Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature 28 (2004), pp. 96–125.

Reflections on the ‘good European’ in the Phase of Brexism Rüdiger Görner

When we look around us these days, politically speaking, the question arises: Have we really arrived in the twenty-first century? Or are we experiencing a regression for the foreseeable future, which can be analysed, but which is not understandable due to our historical burdens, in which resentment is once again rampant and nationalisms are once again celebrating alarming revivals? What is ‘Europe’ given these circumstances? A peculiar ‘hybrid’ of nostalgia and utopia, of pragmatism and idealism? (Incidentally, the ever so fashionable word ‘hybrid’ is chosen deliberately here for its original meaning is not what cultural theory makes us believe that it is. After all, it derives from ‘hubris’ and suggests over-zealous ambition with disastrous consequences.) At any rate, Europe remains a question of perspective and point of view. For some, in the shape of the European Union, it signifies a politically definable entity with limited collective freedom of action; others see it as an increasingly centralized, and bureaucratized state of states, ridden with regulations. Still others, mostly outsiders who do not belong to the EU, see Europe as a huit-clos, a closed zone of prosperity that strives for isolation and the protection of vested interests. The growing desires outside the EU will continue to increase in intensity, provided that the EU can maintain its undeniable attractiveness – despite all the problems and imponderables. Or is ‘Europe’ by now more of a conglomerate of refugee crisis, integration problems, growth mania and debt reality? Is it really imminent, the renewed self-fragmentation of Europe into anachronistic nationalisms, informed by ill-­ conceived exit strategies, or desires, of some of its member states, which pretend that there can still be a de-globalisation of our problems, including a de-networking of our mutual interdependencies? Kant once described simple hospitality as a humane primal gesture, as the elementary prerequisite for cosmopolitan behaviour. For Europe, and in particular the R. Görner (*) School of Languages, Linguistics and Film, Queen Mary University of London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_7

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European Union and its neighbouring states, their handling of migration will remain the permanent challenge to their continental and global image and understanding of themselves. Consequently, the “good European” will have to urgently review his moral code in order to meet this challenge. Those who, ideology-opportunely, make a sweeping mockery of the idea of a social ‘welcome culture’ betray the meaning of humanity. And those who polemically associate humanity only with ‘scurrying’ have hardly understood what the hour has come to. Referenda and elections are currently being won across Europe by shamelessly taking up arms against migrants rhetorically. The state of European affairs requires us all to rethink what sovereignty and (inter-) dependence mean, tolerance and political decisiveness, procedural decision-­ making, and the importance and appropriate functioning of a transnational community of solidarity. All too often overlooked is the fact that since 1952 and 1957 respectively, Europe has developed structures that are unique in its history and represent cultural values of great political significance. Therefore, there is no need to reinvent social values, but there is a need for a new routes to be taken towards securing our fundamental values and human rights. Europe always also consists of the designs for the future rooted in the respective cultures of remembrance, a remembrance that is not infrequently perceived, even denounced, as the historicity of the European consciousness. Again and again, this collective and individual remembering gives rise to the question of whether we can take responsibility for being what we are becoming, or, to put it more appropriately: How can we responsibly influence or help shape what is to become of us Europeans and our European constitution in political and cultural terms? Moreover, for how long can we ‘be’ what we want to become? What do we still have at our disposal in the face of these rapid developments that seem to overtake us every day in the European problem zones? What can make us feel secure in an existence that has to adjust more and more to transitory conditions? How illusory has democratic participation become, be it through plebiscites, whose constitutional meaning remains unclear in a key country of European culture – and I am of course talking about Britain. And yet, at the same time, the constitutional principle of parliamentary democracy in the member states of the EU seems more firmly anchored than ever, at least prior to the Corona epidemic and the authoritarian measures that were taken to contain it. What, then, about our current and future scope for political action? How are they determined? What kind of times are we living in, when not only an emotive concept like ‘homeland’, but also questions of ‘identity’ and ‘culture’ can be monopolized and thus discredited by shameless radicalization? The fact that these questions force themselves upon us anew today, and that they can be posed most aptly with a view to Friedrich Nietzsche, the artistic thinker of the ambivalent, contradictory and unstable, may in itself give food for thought. And this does not refer to the all too dubious “will to power”, but first and foremost to Nietzsche’s no less ambiguous commitment to the “good European”. Nietzsche’s emphatic untimeliness has thereby become unexpectedly contemporary again,

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which is already expressed in the fact alone that his reflections on the “good European” start with the image and condition of the physically and intellectually “homeless”. Now, in recent times, the discourse on homeland, which has even been certified by introducing a Ministry for ‘Heimat’ in Bavaria, has gained renewed emphasis, seconded by problematic theses on ‘identity’, which do not so much critically question the relationship between ego and self, but affirmatively assert the being-­ identical with oneself. The contribution of Otherness to this ‘identity’ remains all-too often not reflected. Admittedly, there is always something precarious about this desire to reassure oneself with reference so-called great minds, such as Nietzsche’s, in whose arsenal of thoughts one rummages, stirring up a lot of dust in the process, until something is found in which we believe we can recognize ourselves or the situation of our time. This usually happens on the edge of self-deception. For on the one hand, we generally assume that historical situations do not repeat themselves, but do take place in a similar, i.e. comparable, manner; on the other hand, we help ourselves to the reservoir of thoughts of the past as if its components could be applied timelessly – at least in the form of tried and tested derivations. Reorientation as part of an intellectual forward movement, this psychological-temporal dialectic characterizes the discourse on Europe to a particular degree, for instance when we ask what the “world of yesterday” (Stefan Zweig) contains in terms of future perspectives, as we do with Novalis and his understanding of “Christendom or Europe”, with T. S. Eliot’s commitment to the “Unity of European Culture” or with Peter Sloterdijk’s thesis of the “translatio imperii”, meaning the transfer of the medieval idea of empire to the structure of the European Union. Perhaps it is only then when we can come to terms with the spirit of, say, the Treaties of Rome and its significance today. Or is this method of looking at our world merely concealing a lack of political imagination, not something too forced? Conceived and further developed as an “ever closer union”, the political constitution of the European Union still describes a concrete utopia in the sense of Ernst Bloch. The starry circle banner on a deep blue background, which has now lost the very star that sets over the British Isles, bears a fine symbolism: This genuinely political European Union is, at the same time, a trans-political carrier of hope with circular characteristics. These include recurring questions such as those of belonging, loyalties within its structures, and how beneficial it is for the Union to open up further and extend its geopolitical scope. Questions pertaining to the very nature of the Union continue to concern us: Do ethno-cultural distinctions still exist in the European Union, and how worthy of preservation or even defence are they? What about the basic values of the European Enlightenment: tolerance and solidarity in the name of humanity?1 Which concept and conception of freedom is the basis for what we are doing within the Union, and how do we try to develop it further?  Cf. Krastev, Ivan: After Europe, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2017, p.  43. Krastev speaks of a “clash of solidarities” in a variation of Samuel Huntingdon. 1

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‘Good’ Europeans could be those who ask themselves these questions and face up to them, provided they are not alibis behind which regional and national, cultural and religious resentments are stirred up. The view of Nietzsche and his problem-oriented preliminary thinking does not apply to the desire to “insure” ourselves with him with regard to our reflections on Europe; no thinking is less suitable than Nietzsche’s decidedly experimental philosophizing for our self-assurance, let alone self-protection. Our reference to Nietzsche here serves as a different perspectivization of, and within, European consciousness. It is to be understood analogously to what Andreas Urs Sommer has called the “practice of cultural self-relativization” or also the “self-problematization of culture”, in this case of political culture, which, through the confrontation with Nietzsche, makes it “inventive”.2 The core of this problematization of cultural and political self-understanding among Europeans derives from Nietzsche’s call for a radical self-alienation of Europe before it can find itself anew. What this means in the context of his thought – and what it means for us – is considered below. Nietzsche exposed his entire intellectual experience, beginning with the heritage of Greek tragedy and ending with the cultural phenomenon of Richard Wagner, which remained insoluble for him, to a process of re-evaluation; it also included the re-evaluation of what ‘European’ meant to him. This re-evaluation process reveals what it means – an all-too-German specificity – to want to use ‘Europe’ as a substitute for what is politically and culturally one’s own. It leads to a risky groundlessness that implements the imperative ‘live dangerously’ as a condition of existence. ‘Europe’ stood for Nietzsche more and more for a realm of self-deracination, mindful of the mythological primordial figure of deracination, an Asia Minor beauty named Europa, who was abducted to Crete, by Zeus, the overpowering primordial transformer. She, the mythical Europa, is the first forced migrant of this continent.3 She remains on its periphery and at the same time gives it her name. She comes from the outside, is an outsider, becomes the mother of Minos, who will have a labyrinth built for the Minotaur, and the mother of Ariadne, the resourceful thread artist. As a foreigner, Europe founds a dynasty that will give the continent, whose namesake she becomes, the most effective myths, which means: The outside, the edges are the decisive zone of fertilization for Europe. Incidentally, Nietzsche himself felt this nowhere more intensely than in Genoa and in his imagined, philologically and mytho-psychologically situated Greece. Mythical Europe first had to be alienated from itself and its original Asia Minor origins in order to see itself abruptly Europeanized by an act of divine violence. For the myth-conscious Nietzsche, the essential feature of this self-alienation, if not even its precondition, was the insight into being unhoused and the unsparing truth about this state. In the Fifth Book of his The Gay Science (Fröhliche Wissenschaft), he sketched the character image of the “good European” under the  Sommer, Andreas Urs: Was bleibt von Nietzsches Philosophie? Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2018, pp. 67 and 69. 3  See, among others, Seeba, Hinrich C.: “Das moralische Gewissen Europas”. Stefan Zweig und Robert Menasse, in: Zeitschrift für interkulturelle Germanistik 9 (2018), H. 1, pp. 119–136. 2

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heading “We Homeless”, exacerbating, if not radicalizing, this state of being unhoused, precisely under the sign of existential uprooting due to the rampant “European nihilism”.4 Along with the preface and the “Songs of the Prince Vogelfrei” (“Lieder des Prinzen Vogelfrei”), Nietzsche had only included this Fifth Book in the second edition of 1887. In it, he will refer to The Gay Science (Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft), obscuring the decidedly Romantic origin of this designation, Friedrich Schlegel’s prose of sensuality, Lucinde, as “Saturnalia of the spirit” (KSA 3, 345). The fact that the predicate “the good European” comes from a thinker who envisaged a state “beyond good and evil”, and thus beyond conventional morality, is one of those paradoxes that have shaped the discourse on Europe for over a century. But what is meant by this? An endurance of a state beyond conventional moral concepts. An opening up to alternative forms of imagining what seems possible beyond the conventional. Nietzsche speaks of the “homelessness” of those who recognize that they live in a “fragile transitional time.” “The ice that still wears today has already become very thin: The thawing wind blows, we ourselves, we homeless, are something that breaks open ice and other all-too-thin ‘realities’ […].” (KSA 3, 629) Nietzsche demands the relentless unmasking of these “realities,” the seeing through of the play-acting he suspects behind duplicitous proclamations of humanity, and the exposure of nationalism; Nietzsche speaks of “national heart-scabies and blood-­ poisoning” rampant in the Europe of his time, where “people demarcate themselves against people as if with quarantines, cordoned off.” (KSA 3, 630) The homeless man could not be challenged by such things; for that he was “too impartial, too wicked, too spoiled, too well ‘instructed’ too ‘travelled.’” We, the homeless, prefer “by far to live on mountains, apart, ‘untimely’, in past or coming centuries, only so that we may spare ourselves the silent rage to which we would know ourselves condemned as eyewitnesses of a politics that makes the German spirit barren by making it vain […].” (KSA 3, 630) Almost any other nationality designation in Europe around 1887 and after can be substituted for ‘German’. Do such sentences not give us the certain and uneasy feeling that some of them are catching up with us again? Or can we be calmer, more relaxed, because since the Coal and Steel Community in 1952 and the Treaty of Rome in 1957, there has been, and continues to be, a steadily institutionalising interdependence, which has made the European Union unique and incomparable in terms of the history of political ideas and practice? Among these physical and spiritual homeless Nietzsche recruited the “good European”, rather: he formed from them a type – admittedly contradictory in itself. This “good European” sees himself as the cultural heir of Europe, “overflowing” and “superabundant”, outgrown by Christianity. No sooner has Nietzsche called up

 In: Nietzsche, Friedrich: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbände, ed. by Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, vol. 3. Munich: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag 1988, pp. 628–631 (=KSA 3, 628–631). All subsequent Nietzsche text references refer to this edition. 4

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the “good European” than he immediately sees himself becoming a “wanderer” with his uprootedness, his homelessness in his luggage. The idea of Europe as a “community of values” is contradicted by Nietzsche’s Good European Wayfarer. On his behalf, Nietzsche found that “Europe” should precisely not be a “sum of value judgements in charge”. It is precisely from them that it is necessary to free oneself. (KSA 3, 633) For Nietzsche sees in these supposed values a source for prejudices; and they are to be transferred into a zone – precisely “beyond good and evil” – because only there, in this worldly beyond, a “re-evaluation” of values and of the judgments connected with them is possible. Nietzsche continues: “One must have untied oneself from many things that oppress, inhibit, hold down, and make difficult just us Europeans of today. The man of such a beyond, who wants to get the highest values of his time into view, has for the time being to ‘overcome’ this time in himself […].” (KSA 3, 633). In order to be able to speak appropriately about Europe, Nietzsche seeks the non-­ European perspective by wanting to form a “non-European eye” for himself, a new optic for an old continent. Thus, in the summer/autumn of 1884, he notes: “I must learn to think more orientally about philosophy and cognition. Oriental overview of Europe.” (KSA 11, 234) Three years earlier, this tendency towards his own foreign view of Europe had already become apparent. He wrote to his friend Heinrich Köselitz in March 1881: I want to live a good time among Muslims, namely, where their faith is now strictest: thus my judgment and my eye for everything European will sharpen. I think such a calculation is not outside my task in life. (KSB 6, 68)

This is a perspectivizing pattern of thought introduced by Montesquieu in his Lettres Persanes (1721). The cultural relativism expressed in this work was part of the rhetorical register of the Enlightenment – also in parodic form, for example in Oliver Goldsmith’s satire The Citizen of the World, or, Letters from a Chinese Philosopher (1760). Nietzsche made this “world perspective” his own, indeed, he demands of himself to literally “practice” it. (KSA 12, 222) These approaches are noted by Nietzsche in the context of the theses on “European Nihilism” of 1887, whereby he peels out a core idea, which precisely needs such a relativizing perspective in order to be defused: the feeling of working “in vain”. He sets himself the task of examining whether this “in vain” is “the character of our present nihilism” and at the same time its “most paralyzing thought”. (KSA 12, 213). And today? Is a paralysing insecurity once again spreading among Europeans, sometimes interrupted by hectic activity on the part of the Brussels elites, followed by fatalistic passivity on the part of even anxious Europeans when it comes to actually imagining the disintegration of the European Union that was thought impossible after Maastricht at the latest? The fact that today more than ever we are nostalgic for the ideal of a liberalized Habsburg as a model for the Union proves, as Ivan Krastev argues, that we are only capable of appreciating something when we have lost it. There is still a consensus among Europeans to preserve the Union by rebuilding, reforming it from within.

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The spirit of ethnicism is spreading in Europe. Sorrowful historical experience shows that even and especially the numerically small ethnic groups tend to consider themselves autonomous, if not self-sufficient, and tend to exclude and delimit themselves, and develop into their own nationalisms. From the Baltic states to the Balkans and the Iberian Peninsula, across Germany to Britain, there are visible and invisible borders. Italy fears foreign invasion from North Africa and responds with rhetoric that could be taken from the ‘Hannibal-ante portas’ period of the Punic Wars. At the same time, a hierarchization of ethnic groups takes place, which leads to resentment among those who – speaking with Nietzsche – behave as the “badly arrived” (KSA 6, 102) and are often dependent on living off the – if present – bad conscience of the privileged. Here, admittedly, we have reached the limit of enriching our search for good Europeanism with Nietzsche. For his Götzen-Dämmerung denounces Christianity as “Umwerthung aller arischen Werthe” (re-evaluation of all Aryan values) and speaks of a “purity” that makes him coin the treacherous term “Mischmasch-Menschen” (mongrel people) and defames them as “Tschandala” (KSA 6, 100). This conceptual turn apparently leads us away from our actual topic, the meaning of the good European. For in Nietzsche’s environment, “Tschandala” is occupied, namely by Richard Wagner’s Buddhist opera design Die Sieger (The Victors), in which a Tschandala girl with a positive connotation is not redeemed by love, but is to be redeemed by love.5 Cosima Wagner reports in her diaries that Wagner had again, at least conversationally, dealt with the problem of “rebirth in music” in May 1870 – in anticipation of the opera he then planned as a work for his old age.6 It is unclear to what extent Nietzsche was aware of Wagner’s Buddhist opera plans, but what is striking here is the emphatic re-evaluation of Tschandala into a negative expression for hybrid. It is the non-European that Wagner wanted to include in his mythic-European opera world, which Nietzsche apparently rejects here in a late reaction. Can a latent competitive relationship to Wagner’s seemingly more integrative understanding of his contribution to European culture be identified in Nietzsche? It seems as if we are becoming more peripheral in Europe, also reflected in the attempt to understand its peripheral zones instead of just erecting fences there to keep out unwelcome immigrants. Or is it dawning on us that – globally speaking – as Europeans we ourselves are becoming peripheral? Like Nietzsche’s “wanderer”, we see ourselves obliged either to leave what we are accustomed to – even if only temporarily – or to come to terms with those “wanderers” who, for their part, have left their own sphere for whatever reason. Nietzsche also demands an “overcoming of time” – and thus also of one’s own “time-inappropriateness”. (KSA 3, 633) It is no longer “untimely considerations” that he has in mind, but a standing outside of time-morality, in order to get it all the more sharply into focus in this way.  Cf. App, Urs: Richard Wagner und der Buddhismus. Rorschach/Kyoto: UniversityMedia 2011, p. 229. 6  Wagner, Cosima: Die Tagebücher in drei Volumes, Vol. 1: 1869–1873, ed. by Karl-Maria Guth. Munich: Piper Verlag 2015, p. 163 (entry from 1 May 1870). 5

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Paradoxically, according to Nietzsche, the ‘good European’ must be able to have distance from himself, to be able to stand beyond himself, in order to thereby be able to dispose of himself. Nietzsche propagated the overcoming the “inappropriateness of time”; he demanded the very same from “Romanticism” or Romantic remnants in the intellectual domain of man. He did so in a book that owes its title, The Gay Science (Die fröhliche Wissenschaft) to a key document of German Romanticism, namely Friedrich Schlegel’s short novel Lucinde. In so doing, he testified to his delight in paradoxical irony. Or is there a hidden hint that for him European consciousness consisted of repeated self-overcoming, a kind of self-negation out of a will to self-assertion? What this emphasis on attaining a position beyond oneself might have been about was suggested, in derivation from Nietzsche, by Georg Simmel in his text The Idea of Europe (Die Idee Europas), which concludes his collection The War and Intellectual Decisions (Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen) (1917). In it, Simmel stressed that “Europeanness” stood “not between nations, but beyond them” and was therefore “readily connectable with each individual national life.”7 Moreover, he found – hardly surprisingly, given the world situation at the time – that Europe had “gambled away the notion of the ‘good European.’”8 Simmel, as conceptually sceptical as he was, described the international or cosmopolitan as “euphonious superstitions of rootlessness” that could only be dealt with by deepening oneself.9 A year earlier, in a lecture given in Vienna, Simmel had stated that the “perfection of persons lags behind that of things” and recognized in this the “self-­ contradiction of culture”, a type of subject-object split within cultural development that is specific to Europe but has long since become worldwide, leading to a growing “incoherence”, i.e. a fragmentation of consciousness.10 Man falls short of what he has produced through his perfecting aspirations. Does this formula not also apply to the European project? Do we not, in our consciousness, also fall short of what the achievements – not perfect, but unique – of the European Union already represent? Take, for example, the Draft Treaty on a Constitution for Europe from 2004, a singular document in the history of our continent,11 which only finds a counterpart in the existence of the Euro as a single European currency, an instrument of material integration that is functional despite all the prophecies of doom. The weaknesses of the draft are well known and then also contributed to its failure in referendums in  Simmel, Georg: Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen. Reden und Aufsätze. Munich/ Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot 1917, p. 69. 8  Ibid., p. 71. 9  Ibid. 10  Ibid., p. 48. 11  Reprinted, inter alia, in the regular edition of the newspaper: Die Welt (09.07.2004), pp. 1–15. Cf. also the critical comments by Köppel, Roger: Entfesselte Bürokratie, in: Ibid., p.  1 and by Vaubel, Roland: Sieben Einwände. In central areas, the present constitutional text still needs to be improved, in: Ibid., p. 16. 7

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France and the Netherlands; however, it was precisely this failure that led to a constructive constitutional agreement, namely the Treaty of Lisbon (2009), which strengthened the principle of subsidiarity so essential for European integration and thus a policy closer to the citizens as well as the autonomy of the European Central Bank. However, the fact that we have reason at all to be able to conduct this kind of discourse on Europe still has something of a fairy-tale about it a hundred years after 1918 and the subsequent nationalist devastation of the continent. But precisely for this reason, the reform discourse on the further development of the European Union must not slip into a pessimism of weakness. Following Nietzsche’s ironic formula, the “good European” continues to be the critical European, because he is aware of history. But this is also the reason for the future perspective that the “good European” represents and suggests. As a kind of super-European of Nietzschean provenance, he would have to endure and help shape a state of continual opening of the Union. As is well known, Nietzsche is the only one in the long history of the idea of the transhuman who has positively valued this type.12 Nietzsche’s transhuman is thereby always also a trans-European and at the same time a human being who, for example, knows how to implement the idea of the Renaissance time and again, namely that of a constant rebirth of consciousness that transcends the turmoil of time from the spirit of art. Nietzsche’s “good European” rejects colonial expansion because it perverts the cultural diversity of the globe. In the summer of 1885, Nietzsche, in a fragment left behind, designed himself as a “good European” in the sense of an overarching value when he writes: Over all these national wars, new “empires,” and whatever else is in the foreground, I consider what concerns me – for I see it slowly and hesitatingly preparing itself – is the One Europe. With all the more comprehensive and profound men of this century it was the real all-absorbing work of their souls to prepare that new synthesis and to anticipate, tentatively, “the European” of the future: only in their weaker hours, or when they grew old, did they fall back into the national narrowness of the “fatherlands” – then they were patriots. (KSA 11/583, Nachlaß June – July 1885, 35 [9])

It is remarkable here that he identifies in the “good European” of his time the person who anticipates this unity and, moreover, assumes the economic necessity for European unification: “Money alone forces Europe at some point to unite into one power” (Ibid., p.  584). Moreover, he recognizes that colonial empires, such as England in particular, have overstretched themselves: “For no one believes any longer that England herself is strong enough to continue playing her old role for only another fifty years […]” (Ibid.). The Anglo-sceptic that he was, Nietzsche tried to convince himself in this notation that, as he writes, “Europe probably needs” to “seriously ‘communicate’ with England.” In the context of his time, he could not yet  See, among others, Knoll, Manuel: The Übermensch as Social and Political Task: A Study in the Continuity of Nietzsche’s Political Thought, in: Manuel Knoll, Barry Stocker (eds.): Nietzsche as Political Philosopher. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2014, pp. 239–266; Schmieder, Carsten: Contra culturam: Nietzsche und der Übermensch, in: Andreas Urs Sommer (ed.), Nietzsche – Philosopher of Culture(s)? Berlin/New York: De Gruyter 2008, pp. 97–102. 12

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imagine that it might one day be the other way around, and that England might have an even greater need to communicate with Europe in a new way. We refuse, however, to follow Nietzsche’s observation which follows this conjecture. For he writes: “For the tasks of the next centuries the types ‘public sphere’ and parliamentarism are the most inexpedient organizations” (Ibid.). It is true that we are currently experiencing once again the political damage that the manipulation of the public can cause and what it means when the supposed will of the British people decides on the fate of an entire state in a single referendum that was initiated for no reason and inadequately prepared, and that for more than two years has had to serve as legitimation for a chaotic government policy on Brexit and has been presented by it as the final word that cannot be corrected. But ‘Europe’ needs a public sphere and its parliamentarism remains the most effective instrument for shaping this Union in a mosaic. The “good European” today remembers historical contexts and their future significance. When Robert Menasse in the novel Hauptstadt speaks of the fact that there must have been contexts when something disintegrates,13 then it is obvious to work on new kinds of integration that can bring about, promote or depict new contexts. This has much in common with that renaissance we have previously called a rebirth of a consciousness that transcends time turmoil thanks to the spirit of art. Others aptly speak of an “aesthetics of narrative integration”,14 consisting of the life contexts of Brussels’ bureaucrats in the case of Menasse’s novel, or of stories of flight and expulsion, of narration about successful and failed attempts at integration, which for its part  – paradoxically enough  – can create community, as fairy tales once managed to do. At the same time, the “good European” knows how to relate such narratives to the political realities, being the undoubted institutional achievements of the European Union. The ambition of this Union is incomparably high, and it must be so because it must continue to respond to abysses that have belonged to Europe since mythical times. Nietzsche suspected that Europe was ultimately an elite project, precisely because its aspirations overtaxed people. But they do not exist, the people, only the individual who moves in a community and relates to it; and he is capable of education, gifted with the ability to interpret signs. When Nietzsche, in his last letter written in Turin on Epiphany 1889, addressed to the cultural historian of the Renaissance, Jacob Burckhardt, half reflectively, half intuitively raises European contexts – from Turin to Basel, from Moscow to Rome and Paris, and then calls up “Ariadne” in the postscript, then this probably does not only mean “Frau Cosima”, being the imagined lover, Cosima Wagner. With this name, Nietzsche’s mythological consciousness appears once again in his letter, his knowledge of the granddaughter of the picture-perfect Europa, whose thread, laid in the labyrinth – or methódos in Greek – was to become the emblem of hermeneutics as a guide. Nietzsche, in this sense a “good European” to the end, had meant with his call to “Ariadne”, which, as a name, was a kind of mythological reflex, the 13 14

 Menasse, Robert: Die Hauptstadt. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag 2017, p. 401.  Seeba 2018, p. 133.

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orientation in the labyrinth of the ego as well as in the unique complexity of European culture. Nothing has remained more valuable than this guide to the interpretive development of our European consciousness against an ever-precarious global background.

References App, Urs: Richard Wagner und der Buddhismus. Rorschach/Kyoto: UniversityMedia 2011. Knoll, Manuel: The Übermensch as Social and Political Task: A Study in the Continuity of Nietzsche’s Political Thought, in: Manuel Knoll, Barry Stocker (Hg.): Nietzsche as Political Philosopher. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter 2014, S. 239–266. Krastev, Ivan: After Europe, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 2017, S. 43. Menasse, Robert: Die Hauptstadt. Roman. Berlin: Suhrkamp Verlag 2017. Nietzsche, Friedrich: Sämtliche Werke. Kritische Studienausgabe in 15 Einzelbänden, hg. von Giorgio Colli und Mazzino Montinari, Bd. 3. München: Deutscher Taschenbuchverlag 1988, S. 628–631. Schmieder, Carsten: Contra culturam: Nietzsche und der Übermensch, in: Andreas Urs Sommer (Hg.), Nietzsche – Philosoph der Kultur(en)? Berlin/New York: De Gruyter 2008, S. 97–102. Seeba, Hinrich C.: „Das moralische Gewissen Europas“. Stefan Zweig und Robert Menasse, in: Zeitschrift für interkulturelle Germanistik 9 (2018), H. 1, S. 119–136. Simmel, Georg: Der Krieg und die geistigen Entscheidungen. Reden und Aufsätze. München/ Leipzig: Duncker & Humblot 1917. Sommer, Andreas Urs: Was bleibt von Nietzsches Philosophie? Berlin: Duncker & Humblot 2018. Wagner, Cosima: Die Tagebücher in drei Bänden, Bd. 1: 1869–1873, hg. von Karl-Maria Guth. München: Piper Verlag 2015, S. 163.

Part V Images of Europe in Film and Contemporary Literature: Utopias and Dystopias

Europe as Utopia and Dystopia in the Films of Jean-Luc Godard and Lars von Trier Henry Keazor

The 2015 film “Francofonia” by Russian director Alexander Soukorov deals with the German occupation of Paris in June 1940, the threat this posed to works of art held in French collections and museums such as the Louvre, and the relationship between the German “art protection” commissioner Franz Count Wolff-Metternich and the French Louvre director Jacques Jaujard. Soukorov uses these events, circumstances, and figures to reflect on the role and the function of museums. Ultimately, he portrays their collections as identity-forming, which he attempts to demonstrate concretely with the genre of the portrait, which, according to him, is as typical as it is formative for European culture: while he shows corresponding examples of sixteenth-century portrait art from the hand of the painter Corneille de Lyon (Fig.  1a, b, c, d), Soukorov asks himself offscreen what would have become of European culture without the genre of the portrait. He sees its significance, among other things, in the fact that it encourages each individual to put his or her own existence and position in life into perspective, since the portraits of other people remind us that there were other existences long before our own existence. This insight causes humility, especially since these other, earlier people may have achieved and created more and more significant things than one’s own generation. Soukorov therefore asks himself, among other things, who he would have become if he had not been able to look into the eyes of those portrayed by the painters of the Early Modern period. At the same time, the director takes this as an opportunity to ask himself where this urge on the part of Europeans to capture individuals and their faces comes from, and whether the portrait is a typically European genre that remains unexplored in other contexts, such as that of the Muslims.1 It thus becomes clear that Soukorov sees a common denominator in what  Soukorov, Alexander: Francofonia, DVD. Paris: Ideale Audience, 2015, 00:12:05–00:12:27.

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H. Keazor (*) ZEGK – Institute for European Art History, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_8

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Fig. 1 (a, b) Screenshots from: Alexander Soukorov: Francofonia, 2015, (c, d): Corneille de Lyon (workshop): Portrait of Clément Marot, Paris, Louvre, ca. 1550, and Unknown sixteenth Century Painter: Portrait of a Couple, Paris, Louvre

could be seen as ‘the European’ – and the artist Corneille de Lyon, whom he chooses as a concrete example, is indeed not entirely inappropriate for this, since he was born between 1500 and 1510 in The Hague,2 but died in Lyon in 1575, after he had gone from the Netherlands to France and made a career there as a portraitist of the royal family, house painter and finally court painter. This describes a career that was quite common for artists in the Early Modern period, for the artist who travelled through Europe, possibly bringing cultural characteristics of his own country of origin to another country, was already at this time no longer a rarity in the various arts, as can be seen, for example, in the composer Johannes Ciconia, who was born in Liège around 1370–1375, lived and worked in Italy from 1391 onwards, and died

 He is therefore also called Corneille de la Haye or Cornelis van Den Haag – about him see Dubois de Groer, Anne: Corneille de La Haye dit Corneille de Lyon. Paris: Arthena 1996. 2

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in Padua in July 1412. As one of the first Flemish to work in Italy, his compositions display a peculiar synthesis of Flemish, French and Italian stylistic elements.3 Of course, this should not obscure the fact that at the same time there was also a national focus on the arts: In 1550, the Italian painter and biographer Giorgio Vasari focused on his Italian compatriots in the first edition of his biographies of important artists, the “Vite deʼ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani” – a specification, which he then omitted in 1568  in the second edition, which was published under the broader title “Le vite deʼ più eccellenti pittori, scultori, e architettori”, but which, like the previous edition, nevertheless dealt primarily with Italian artists.4 About 100 years later, this changed with the “Vite deʼ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni”, written in 1672 by Giovan Pietro Bellori, in which not only the “moderni”, i.e. contemporary artists, are examined, as the title promises, but in which the author also looks beyond the borders of Italy:5 Bellori’s twelve biographies now include “only” eight Italians; the other four are French, Dutch, and Flemish artists. Bellori’s implicit selection principle for these ‘European’ artists is now less their origin than their relationship to Rome, which is (still) seen here as the centre of the arts:6 It is in Rome, and in the antiquities and masterpieces assembled in Rome, that the modern artist must train himself, in order to, in alignment with nature, lead art out of the crisis of Mannerism, which has been weakening it since the late sixteenth century. The qualities brought by the various artists from their respective countries of origin are thus to lead art to new heights in the context of a synthesis with the authentic Roman achievements and then to secure them.7 A very similar idea later lay behind a passage by the Italian polymath, philosopher, poet, writer, art critic and art dealer Francesco Algarotti, who wrote on 24 June 1736 to Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, who was the “Secrétaire perpétuel” of the Académie des Sciences in Paris: Indeed, travellers should be tradesmen of the mind and exchange dealers of each other’s riches, in which one nation is already more advanced than another. Happy that society in

 About him, see, among others, Vendrix, Philippe (ed.): Johannes Ciconia: musicien de la transition. Turnhout: Brepols 2003. 4  See Vasari, Giorgio: Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani. Florenz: Torrentino 1550 und ders.: Le vite de’ più eccellenti pitori, scultori, e architettori. Florenz: Giunti 1568. 5  Bellori, Giovan Pietro: Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni. Rom: Mascardi 1672. 6  The background of this opening towards a more European perspective is certainly also the fact that France, under Louis XIV, was preparing to replace Italy in general and Rome in particular as the centre of European art – that Bellori was aware of this development and tried to react to it becomes clear from the fact that his biographies, written in Italian, are dedicated to the French finance minister Jean-Baptiste Colbert – which also means that Bellori received financial support from him for the publication. 7  See on this, among others, Keazor, Henry: “il vero modo”. The Carracci Painting Reform. Berlin: Gebr. Mann 2007, pp. 15–46. 3

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Such words anticipate to some extent what the German-Baltic philosopher Count Hermann Keyserling formulated in his book “Das Spektrum Europas” (The Spectrum of Europe) in 1928, when he regarded Europe as “inherently a unity” that was “composed of certain components that necessarily belong together and complement each other”.9 European culture is thus not understood here as a single, uniform and obligatory style in thought and creation, but rather as a concert of many approaches and voices, which, as conceived by Algarotti in his previously quoted praise, repeatedly enter into relationships with one another in ever new constellations, mutually enriching, reinforcing, challenging and advancing one another in their complementary differences. This very idea of art as “concordia discors”, as a unifying principle of Europe, can also be seen as implicitly behind Jean-Luc Godard’s 1982 film “Passion”. It tells the story of Jerzy, a director who wants to make a film in which ten of the most famous European paintings from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century are recreated on camera. The paintings chosen for the film are Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” (Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum, 1642) and four paintings by Francisco Jose de Goya: his “Nude Maya” (Madrid, Prado, 1797), “The Shooting of the Insurgents on 3 May 1808” (Madrid, Prado, 1814), his “Group Portrait of the Family of Charles IV” (Madrid, Prado 1798), his “Portrait of the King of France” (Madrid, Prado, 1814), (Madrid, Prado 1798), and his “Parasol” (El Quitasol: Madrid, Prado, 1777).10 Furthermore, Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres’ “Le Bain Turc” (Paris, Louvre, 1862), Eugène Delacroix’ “Entry of the Crusaders in Constantinople” (Paris, Louvre, 1840) and “Jacob’s Fight with the Angel” (Paris, Saint-Sulpice, Chapel of the Holy Angels, 1857/61), El Greco’s “Assumption of Mary” (Toledo,  Works of Count Algarotti. Edizione Novissima, Volume 9: Lettere Varie  – Part One. Venice: Palese, 1794, pp. 11–20, here pp. 18–19: “E nel vero dovrebbono i viaggiatori essere i trafficanti dello spirito, e i concambiatori delle mutue dovizie, onde anco in questo fatto è una nazione avvantaggia più che un’altra. Felice quella società, dove la fantasia italiana col sapere inglese, e colla francese cultura per alcun novello Talete o Platone innestar se potesse.” 9  Keyserling, Graf Hermann: Das Spektrum Europas. In eleven chapters, Keyserling then describes the respective contribution of England, France, Spain, Germany, Italy, Hungary, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Sweden, the Baltic States and the Balkans to the spectrum, the synthesis of which he draws in the last section entitled “Europa”. On the wider tradition behind this idea, see, among others, Dietmar Pfeil: “Concordia discors. Anmerkungen zu einem politischen Harmoniemodell von der Antike bis in die Neuzeit,” in: Klaus Grubmüller, Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, Klaus Speckenbach (eds.): Geistliche Denkformen in der Literatur des Mittelalters (Münsterische Mittelalter-Schriften, vol. 51), Munich: Wilhelm Fink 1984, pp. 401–434. 10  Paech, Joachim: Passion oder die EinBILDungen des Jean-Luc Godard. Frankfurt a.M.: Deutsches Filmmuseum 1989, p. 14 identifies the Goya painting The Letter (or The Young, Lille, Palais des beaux-arts) from 1814/19 as the model, but it differs both in motif and colour from the painting recreated in the film, which is clearly The Parasol. Also Vancheri, Luc: Cinéma et peinture. Paris: Armand Colin 2007, p.  119 assumes that it is the latter painting that is restaged in the film. 8

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Museo de Santa Cruz, 1607/13), and Antoine Watteau’s “Embarkation for Cythera” (interpreted in three paintings: Frankfurt a.M., Städel, 1710, Paris, Louvre, 1717, and Berlin, Schloss Charlottenburg, 1718 – as is made clear by the ship’s scenery required for the painting’s restaging in Godard’s film,11 Jerzy’s project apparently refers to the latter version). Similar to Bellori’s “Vite”, there is a certain focus on the art of one country (in this case  – with Goya and El Greco  – Spain), but around this are then grouped examples of French painting, which are also very well represented, and Dutch painting, represented by a famous masterpiece. Jerzy’s declared aim in the film is to capture the light in these paintings on film – however, he fails in this endeavour, as the artificial light set for the shots always seems wrong. In addition, the re-enacted images are repeatedly shown as disturbed when figures from different painting contexts walk through them or anachronistically modern objects push themselves into view, whereby it is noticeable that only the re-enactment of Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” is largely spared such intruders. The film critic and Godard specialist Colin MacCabe has interpreted this failure to mean that Godard’s own film is a criticism of the director’s undertaking: above the fixation on recreating the paintings, the director fails to notice the everyday beauties around him: the light of Lake Geneva captured by the camera, the faces of the actors, the happenings around the people.12 It is questionable, however, whether Godard’s intention is really correctly revealed in this way. For even if it is certainly correct that the light in the reenacted “Night Watch” is described by the director as “wrong” and then juxtaposed by Godard with a shot of the light of the lake by means of a counter-cut,13 MacCabe’s attempt at interpretation does not explain why, if general criticism is to be made of Jerzy’s project, the “Night Watch” is the only ‘undisturbed’ image of the enterprise. In fact, Godard’s “Passion” seems to have a different intention, which is also indirectly articulated by Jerzy at one point in the film, when he rebels against the permanent question about the story told by his film, as he resists the expectation that images and films must always tell stories – according to him, it is rather the idea behind the works that is decisive.14 MacCabe has quite rightly observed here that Godard’s film, strictly speaking, tells too many and at the same time too few stories.15 For “Passion” interweaves three narrative strands: firstly, that of the shooting of Jerzy’s film, then scenes dealing with the relationship between the man in whose hotel the film crew is staying and his wife, and finally that of the fate of a young  Godard, Jean-Luc: Passion, DVD. Berlin: Arthaus 2010, 01:22:46–01:23:52.  Ibid., Extra: Introduction to the film by Colin MacCabe: 00:02:05–00:02:18. In contrast, Vancheri (2007, p. 115) better sums up the tension between the film Godard himself made and the film he shows when he concludes, “Jerzy échoue peut-être à réaliser son film, mais Godard réussit le sien.” 13  Ibid., 00:06:22–00:07:12 with off-screen dialogue, “Ça ne va pas. […] C’est la lumière.” 14  Ibid., 00:28:45 with Jerzy’s question, “Pourquoi faut-il toujours une histoire?” See on this aspect also Paech (1989, pp. 11–12). 15  Ibid., Extra: Introduction to the film by Colin MacCabe: 00:01:43–00:01:46. 11 12

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rebellious worker who has been dismissed and is now calling on her colleagues to go on strike. The fact that the three narrative strands not only interpenetrate each other, but also repeatedly reflect one another in their themes, becomes clear when the solidarity claimed by the worker is mirrored in a statement by Jerzy, who actually comments on the possible quality of film images: “A picture is not strong because it is brutal or fantastic, but because the solidarity of ideas is far-reaching and just.”16 Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” is obviously the model for these numerous stories, which overlap and intersect in such a way that in the end no real plot emerges. (Fig. 2) While most of the paintings selected by Jerzy tell a story, Rembrandt’s picture is more the embodiment of an idea in that, like Godard’s film, it tells too many and thus in the end no story at all. For in order to make his Shooting Company portrait vivid, Rembrandt departed from the usually cultivated tradition of summing up the individual members of the group into a scene in a clearly recognizable manner and therefore in the form of individual likenesses lined up paratactically. Instead, he strove to capture them at the moment of their departure in a seemingly disorderly mode suggesting spontaneity, which admittedly comes at the expense of the clarity of the action depicted and, above all, the recognizability of the individual portraits. The pictorial personnel, who is inconsistently dressed, seems to be striving in different directions and details such as the shadowed barking dog in the lower right or the two brightly lit, richly dressed girls on the left, the one in the back of which is obscured, distract further from the main action, which is already difficult to survey. Finally, only sections of some of the guild members’ faces are visible. All this was already felt by Rembrandt’s contemporaries, as documented by the criticism of Samuel van Hoogstraten, a former pupil of Rembrandt, in his book “Inleydingh tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst” (Introduction to the Academy of Painting), published in 1678: The true masters manage to have their work subjected to a unified thought […]. Rembrandt did this very much, too much in the opinion of many, in his piece in the Arquebusiers guild hall in of Amsterdam, caring more for the big picture of his overall conception than for the individual portraits he was charged with. And yet this picture, however assailable, will, in my opinion, outlast all works of its kind, because it is so picturesquely conceived, so intricate in composition, and so vigorous, that, in the impression of many, all the other guilds’ pieces seem like playing cards. Though I would have liked him to have brought a little more light into the picture.17  Ibid., 00:30:49–00:30:65. In the original: “Une image n’est pas forte parce qu’elle est brutale ou fantastique mais parce que la solidarité des idées est lointaine et juste.” 17  Hoogstraten, Samuel van: Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst. Rotterdam: François van Hoogstraten (1678, p. 176) – in the original: “De rechte meesters brengen te weeg, dat haer geheele werk eenwezich is […]. Rembrant heeft dit in zijn stuk op den Doele zeer wel [gedaan], maer na veeler gevoelen al te veel, waergenomen, maekende meer werks van het groote beelt zijner verkiezing, als van de byzondere afbeeltsels, die hem waren aenbesteet. Echter zal dat zelve werk, hoe berispelijk, na mijn gevoelen al zijn meedestrevers verdueren, zijnde zoo schilderachtich van gedachten, zoo zwierich van sprong, en zoo krachtich, dat, nae zommiger gevoelen, al d’andere stukken daer als kaerteblaren nevens staen. Schoon ik wel gewilt hadde, dat hy ’er meer lichts in ontsteeken had.” There (p. 190) van Hoogstraten also praises the Night Watch and recom16

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Fig. 2  Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn: The Night Watch, Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, 1642

All of this can now be found realized in Godard’s “Passion”: Like Rembrandt’s “Night Watch”, the film does not tell a single story, but follows the idea of watching people go about their business. At the same time, Hoogstraaten’s criticism also emphasizes the special light that Jerzy tries to recreate and that is explicitly addressed again and again in the off-screen dialogues during the filming of the “Night Watch” reenactment: • Monsieur Bonnel, what is this story?18 • Because the composition is full of holes and poorly utilized spaces. Don’t look closely at the composition or the scenes. Do as Rembrandt did: Watch the people carefully. Look slowly at their lips and in their eyes. […] mends it as a prime example of group portraiture precisely because of the seemingly random distribution of its figures: “Look for a pleasant staggering, that is, a clever but seemingly random arrangement of the figures, so that one could not, so to speak, decapitate them all with one blow as in some marksmen’s plays.” In the original: “Neem een aerdige sprong waer, dat is een welkunstige, maer in schijn ongemaekte plaetsing uwer beelden: op dat menze niet, bij wijze van spreeken, al te gelijk (als in sommige Doelstukken) de hoofden kan afslaen”. 18  Paech (1989, p. 11) points out that he is the assistant director Patrick Bonnel.

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• Mr. Coutard, what is this story?19 • This is not a story; it is all properly lit, left to right, a little top to bottom, and a little front to back. This is not a night watch, but a day watch, lit by an already low sun. Look, monsieur, how in the place where the light is, in a darker corner of the canvas, there, in the background, between the man in red and the Capitano in black, it gives off much more energy because the contrast is so strong. Without extreme safety precautions, an explosion of this random light would have been enough to throw the whole painting into disorder.20 The statements make it clear that, according to this understanding, Rembrandt is not so much concerned with a self-contained composition or even a narrated story as with the realization of a unified idea as well as the energy resulting from the chosen color composition, which is gained from a contrast. Godard restages this contrast with the help of montage when, immediately afterwards, he switches sharply from a portrait of a person to a landscape and at the same time from the dark to the light.21 This sequence also vividly illustrates why and to what extent Rembrandt can be a model for the modern film artist: like the painter, he or she must ask himself how he or she deals with his or her pictures. In this respect, Jerzy’s attempt is obviously no longer about doubling the already existing paintings with the means of film, but rather about trying things out, experimenting with genuinely cinematic means: thus, in place of the fixed point of view to be adopted by the painter, the moving camera

19 20

 Paech (1989, p. 11) points out that this is the cameraman Raoul Coutard.  Godard: Passion: 00:04:13–00:06:17. In the original:

- Monsieur Bonnel, que’est-ce que c’est cette histoire? - C’est parce que cette composition est pleine de trous d’espaces mal occupés. N’examinez sévèrement ni la construction, ni les plans. Faites comme Rembrandt: regardez les êtres humains attentivement, longuement, aux lèvres et dans les yeux. […] - Qu’est-ce que c’est que cette histoire, Monsieur Coutard? - Il n’y a pas d’histoire. Toute est correctement éclairée, de gauche à droite, un peu d’haut en bas, un peu d’avant et en arrière. Ce n’est pas une ronde de nuit, mais une ronde de jour, éclairée par un soleil déjà bas sur l’horizon. Notez, Monsieur, que la place qu’elle occupe dans l’un des coins sombres de la toile, un peu en bas au second plan, entre un homme en rouge foncé et le capitaine habillé en noir, cette lumière excentrique a d’autant plus d’activité que le contraste avec ce qui l’avoisine est plus subit et que sans des précautions extrêmes, il aurait suffit que cette explosion de lumière accidentelle pour désorganiser tout le tableau. As Jean-Louis Leutrat has shown in 1990, these utterings are actually quotes taken from the book by the French art critic Eugène Fromentin, “Les maîtres d’autrefois” (1876) in which some criticism of the “Night Watch” is voiced. See for this Leutrat, Jean-Louis: Qu‘est-ce que c‘est que cette histoire?, in: Raymond Bellour (ed.): Cinéma et peinture: Approches, Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1990, pp. 123–135. Klaus Krüger sees a connection between such a thematization of light in Rembrandt’s painting and the film as a reference to the cinematic technique of the ‘American night’, where night shots are shot during the day with the help of filters and apertures. See for this Krüger, Klaus: Jean-Luc Godards PASSION (Frankreich 1982). Kunst als Wirklichkeit postmoderner Imagination, in: Helmut Korte and Johannes Zahlten (eds.): Kunst und Künstler im Film, Hameln: CW Niemeyer 1990, pp. 81–92, here p. 81. 21  Ibid., 00:06:38–00:07:12.

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can take up different positions, roam over the pictorial space or also drive into it. In addition, not only the camera, but also the image personnel can be mobile. All this makes various transitions possible: on the one hand, between the paintings  – in “Passion”, for example, a transit between Goya’s paintings is made possible by the protagonist of his “Parasol” painting strolling through the scene of the “Nude Maya” towards the “Royal Family” (Fig. 3a, b). But transitions are not only created between the works of one and the same artist, but also, for example, thanks to a camera pan between El Greco’s “Assumption of Mary” and Delacroix’s “Jacob’s Fight with the Angel”. The latter even emerges from a passage from art to life, or vice versa, when Jerzy, in his capacity as director of the film he is shooting, begins at one point to wrestle with an actor costumed as an angel, who seems to come from the context of the restaged El Greco (Fig. 4). The protagonist of Goya’s “Parasol” also suggests that she is making a transit from art to everyday life, when later in the film she seems to wander through the grey, extra-­ filmic reality with a red parasol (in almost complementary contrast to the green parasol she is usually holding) (Fig. 3c).22 They, like Jerzy himself, thus make the transition from art to life that the director drew as a lesson from Rembrandt’s “Night Watch”. It is also implemented on a

Fig. 3 (a–c) Screenshots from Jean-Luc Godard: Passion, 1982 22

 Ibid., 00:28:46–00:29:35.

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Fig. 4  Screenshot from Jean-Luc Godard: Passion, 1982

formal level, in that Godard repeatedly creates references with the help of image and sound montages, for example by relating – beyond the visual links between the light of Lake Geneva and that in Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” – film spotlights to the light sources in private apartments,23 or by combining off-screen sentences that sound as if they would refer to Rembrandt’s paintings with the film images in such a way that they also fit a view of the employee working in the factory (Fig. 5a, b)24 and the appeal read out of “Night Watch” to ‘just watch the people’ as in Rembrandt’s work, is redeemed.25 In view of all this, it now also becomes clear how the French, Dutch and Spanish paintings from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century recreated in the film relate to one another: Rembrandt’s “Night Watch”, against the backdrop of the other European paintings shown as a contrasting foil, provides the aesthetic stance followed by his own film: to observe, to follow events rather than to search for a story – Godard consequently positions himself with his film within the European tradition of painting, while at the same time updating, examining and implicitly judging the latter with the help of cinematic means.

 Ibid., 00:16:14–00:16:48.  Ibid., 00:04:10–00:04:12. 25  See also Paech (1989, p. 14). 23 24

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Fig. 5 (a, b) Screenshot from Jean-Luc Godard: Passion, 1982

The direct counter-image to Godard’s refusal of narration can be seen in Lars von Trier’s film “Europa”, shot nine years after Godard’s “Passion”, where, in contrast, the attempt is made to capture complex historical, political and human dynamics as well as their interconnectedness in a narrated story.26 “Europa” was designated by Lars von Trier himself, among others, as the concluding part of a trilogy that began in 1984 with “The Element of Crime”27 and was continued three years later with “Epidemic”.28 The director formulated the element unifying the three films as follows: “The three films that we see as a trilogy have more or less the same story. An idealist goes into a dangerous environment and also ends up being corrupt. That’s the story of the three films.”29 Although “Europa” is set in post-war Germany, the film is more concerned, as the title suggests, with a kind of definition of Europe’s position. This European perspective is also made clear by the end credits, which identify the film as a thoroughly European product, even before the actors’ names are given, which usually come first. Not only was this Danish-French-German-Swedish co-production financed by various European institutions (including the Council of Europe) and shot in Denmark and Poland, but in it French, German and Danish actors meet their American counterparts, while speaking German and English. These two languages also indicate the tension within which the aforementioned positioning takes place, for the main character is a young, idealistic American of German descent named  Cf the contribution by Stephan Kammer in this volume.  The plot, succinctly summarized: a hypnotist sends a police officer back to Europe to relive how he slowly assumed the identity of a serial killer while searching for him. 28  The succinctly summarized plot: two screenwriters have a hypnotist put a young woman into the scenario they invented so that she can see how the plague described there is spreading to reality. 29  Lars von Trier in an interview with Peter Kremski, in: Filmbulletin, H. 3/1991, here quoted from the press booklet of the RealFiction film distributor on the release of the re-release of Europa on 21 July 2005, available online at URL: http://www.realfictionfilme.de/presse/index_repertoire.php (under “EUROPA/LARS VON TRIER – EUROPA TRILOGIE 3,” last accessed 6/6/2020), o. p. [p. 2]. The hypnotist also appears in Europa, albeit off-screen: he gives instructions to the audience at the beginning and end of the film. See also the following note here. 26 27

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Leopold Kessler, who travels to Germany, destroyed by World War II in 1945, to help rebuild the country. That Kessler was given this German-American heritage has two reasons: First, it points to the longer-term relationship between Europe and America through the fact that the origins of many Americans are European. Interestingly, the original title of the film is also not “Europe” but “Europa”, thus invoking the name of the mythological namesake of the continent, the Phoenician king’s daughter abducted by Zeus.30 And indeed, a railway inspector refers to Kessler’s own task of connecting the countries of Europe by means of a train network as “mythological”.31 Secondly, the protagonist’s origins point to the particularly striking relationship between America and Europe after the latter continent became the site of the Second World War – the film is therefore set precisely at this crossroads. “Europa” translates this tense relationship between the Old and the New World on various levels by means of literarily connoted contrasts: it is no coincidence that the title, which means a continent, is reminiscent of Franz Kafka’s novel fragment “The Missing Person” (Der Verschollene), which he wrote between 1911 and 1914 and which was published posthumously by Max Brod in 1927 under the title “Amerika”.32 In it, Kafka’s protagonist Karl Rossmann travels by ship to New York, while Leopold Kessler, as he is told, has traveled “from New York by ship” to Germany, i.e., has taken the exact opposite route of the “Missing Person.”33 And just as Kafka’s protagonist gets lost in the modern systems of order of “Amerika” that seem strange to him, Kessler’s fate in Europa is hardly any different when he gets caught up in a web of intrigues that he cannot resist, since he initially assumes in good faith only the best intentions of all those involved. The system of order that ultimately plunges him into ruin manifests itself in the German railway company with the significant name “Zentropa”, which seems to sum up von Trier’s negative view of Germany: “For me, everything threatening about Europe is concentrated in Germany.”34 “Zentropa” therefore stands, on the one hand, figuratively for the dangers emanating from Europe and, in the director’s  The hypnotist voiced by Max von Sydow at the end of the film also says: “You want to wake up, to free yourself from the image of Europa, but it is not possible”. See Lars von Trier: Europa, DVD. London: Tartan 2002: 01:42:48–01:43:00. 31  From Trier: Europe: 00:11:11. 32  See also von Trier’s own reference to this in the 1991 Trier/Kremski interview [p. 6]: “My coauthor Niels and I, we have a weakness for Kafka. We especially like his book ‘Amerika’. This book was a kind of inspiration for our film ‘Europa’. We tell the story the other way around. Kafka’s ‘Amerika’ is about a European going to America, and our film is about an American coming to Europe: to the place where his parents lived. There are some parallels between the Kafka story and our story.” 33  Von Trier: Europe: 00:03:34: “[…] on a ship from New York”. 34  Interview of Trier/Kremski 1991 [p. 6]. The full wording of the passage is: “Everything threatening about Europe is for me summed up in Germany. It is a historical fact that Denmark and Germany have very often been at war with each other and Denmark has been badly beaten every time. Looking south is associated with fear for us. A lot of things about Germany are interesting: the industry on one side and then the culture, the literature, the movies. There are so many powers that go in different directions and clash.” Von Trier, thus, fails to detect any “concordia” in the “discordia” here. 30

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view, concentrated by Germany like a burning glass, and, on the other hand, quite concretely for the centralist madness of the Nazis: in the film, it turns out that even this German sleeping car company “Zentropa” was actually involved in transporting Jews to concentration camps under the guise of serving the good, comfortable sleep of travelers. Von Trier suggests that these activities were not imposed on the train company, but that the strictly bureaucratically organized company apparently had a certain affinity for such ideologically motivated atrocities from the outset, as is clear from the paramilitary elements that characterized it: within “Zentropa” a dashing, snappy tone prevails, which also suits the uniforms, which are in no way inferior to those of the American military. The latter, however, is not portrayed as a virtuous counter-image to “Zentropa”, but rather, in the figure of Colonel Harris, who wants to use the company for his own purposes, as something that can be corrupted by the control it facilitates. Harris is played by the American actor Eddie Constantine, who has been very popular in Europe since the 1950s, thus thematizing America and Europe not only in the context of political but also cinematic topographies: Von Trier accommodates a multitude of references in “Europa” to films dealing directly and indirectly with National Socialism, such as Michael Curtiz’s “Casablanca” from 1942 or Carol Reed’s “The Third Man” from 1949. In particular, however, he makes reference to Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” from 1959 with the help of motivic echoes, which are also explicitly identified in the credits,35 in the film music composed by Joachim Holbek, as well as the technique of rear projection, which is deliberately identified as such:36 even the signet for “Europa” (Fig. 6a) is visibly based on that of the Hitchcock film, while the letters to the right of the word “Europa”, forming the director’s name in a typography that tapers downwards in perspective, can be related back to the central element of “Vertigo”, that is: the fear of heights (Fig. 6b). All in all, von Trier’s film paints a pessimistic picture of Europe shaped by the perverted Zentropa enterprise: misunderstood by America, but also taken in hand by the victorious power for selfish motives, the Germany that represents Europe cannot get away from its guilt and the negative forces shaping its past. Von Trier has also put this into the words of the “Europa” aria composed by Holbek,37 to the sounds of which the credits roll. Interpreted by the Swiss baritone  Cf the specific information in the credits clarifying the rights: Von Trier: Europa: 01:47:00: “Variation of ‘Vertigo Prelude’ by Bernhard [sic!] Herrmann made on courtesy of Ensign Music Corporation”. This publisher is the rights holder to Herrmann’s film music. 36  See also the information in the 2005 press booklet [p. 4]: “EUROPA shows some references to Alfred Hitchcock (see also Lars von Trier on Europa). It is no coincidence that VERTIGO (1958) is one of his favourite films. In addition to the screenplay concept, von Trier moved the largest and most important parts of the plot to moving railway trains  – the master’s favourite locations. Joachim Holbek’s score, with its ‘stabbing’ rhythms and chord repetitions, can also be seen as a tribute to Hitchcock’s best-known composer Bernard Herrmann. Like Hitchcock, von Trier plays small guest roles in almost every one of his films. In EUROPA, he plays a Jew from whom a false testimony is extorted.” 37  Significantly, it is strongly influenced by Bernard Herrmann’s repeatedly quoted Vertigo motif: the sight of the abyss opened up by Europe makes one dizzy. 35

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Fig. 6 (a) Signet of the film Europa by Lars von Trier, 1991, (b) Saul Bass: Film poster for Alfred Hitchcock: Vertigo, 1959

Philippe Huttenlocher and the German Nina Hagen, the aria text in German and English evokes the mythological level of Europa’s namesake, who, however, does not meet Zeus on the beach, who has been transformed into a bull, but rather meets a wolf and harbours ambivalent feelings towards it. Thus, Nina Hagen intones the following words in the role of Europa:I played on the beach and all of a sudden. a wolf, fierce and mighty. I trembled, I sighed I’m wanting you, needing you, pleading you, but you know better. I’m fearing you, hating you, wanting you, but you know better. On the one hand, the wolf generally stands for the wild and aggressive instincts of man according to the quotation “Homo homini lupus” from the dedicatory text of the “Elementa philosophica de cive” by the English state theorist and philosopher Thomas Hobbes from 1657.38 On the other hand, however, a group of National Socialist fanatics, who in von Trier’s film seek to destabilize post-war Germany through terrorist acts, call themselves “werewolves” – the “wild and strong” wolf, which is as fascinating as it is repulsive and frightening to Europe, is thus also a symbol of the lurking European totalitarianism, which von Trier evidently perceives as ideally condensed in the figure of German National Socialism. From the director’s point of view, Europe can no more free itself from National Socialism and the threatening fascination it exudes, than the audience is able to free itself from the sight of Europe presented to it at the end of the film. At the beginning of the film, the actor Max von Sydow speaks the words as a hypnotist: “I shall now count from one to ten. On the count of ten, you will be in Europa.”39 At the end of the film, he 38 39

 Hobbes, Thomas: Elementa philosophica de cive. Amsterdam: Elzevier 1657, p. 2 verso.  From Trier: Europe: 00:00:50–00:01:00.

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invokes, “You want to wake up to free yourself from the image of Europe, but it is not possible.”40 While Godard in his film “Passion” draws the picture of a utopia41 that manifests itself in the art of Europe, von Trier contrasts this with a dystopia from which there seems to be no escape. It is interesting to consider what synthesis Algarotti, quoted at the beginning, would have drawn from a spectrum of Europe, fanned out in such way.

References Algarotti, Francesco: Opere del Conte Algarotti. Edizione Novissima, Tomo 9: Lettere Varie  – Parte Prima. Venezia: Palese 1794. Bellori, Giovan Pietro: ‚Le vite de‘ pittori, scultori et architetti moderni. Rom: Mascardi 1672. Dubois de Groer, Anne: Corneille de La Haye dit Corneille de Lyon. Paris: Arthena 1996. Godard, Jean-Luc: Passion, DVD. Berlin: Arthaus 2010. Hobbes, Thomas: Elementa philosophica de cive. Amsterdam: Elzevier 1657. Hoogstraten, Samuel van: Inleyding tot de Hooge Schoole der Schilderkonst. Rotterdam: François van Hoogstraten 1678. Keazor, Henry: „il vero modo“. Die Malereireform der Carracci. Berlin: Gebr. Mann 2007. Keyserling, Graf Hermann: Das Spektrum Europas. Heidelberg: Niels Kampmann 1928. Krüger, Klaus: Jean-Luc Godards PASSION (Frankreich 1982). Kunst als Wirklichkeit postmoderner Imagination, in: Helmut Korte and Johannes Zahlten (eds.): Kunst und Künstler im Film, Hameln: CW Niemeyer 1990, p. 81–92. Leutrat, Jean-Louis: Qu‘est-ce que c‘est que cette histoire?, in: Raymond Bellour (ed.): Cinéma et peinture: Approches, Paris: Presses universitaires de France 1990, p. 123–135. Paech, Joachim: Passion oder die EinBILDungen des Jean-Luc Godard. Frankfurt a. M.: Deutsches Filmmuseum 1989. Pfeil, Dietmar: „Concordia discors”. Anmerkungen zu einem politischen Harmoniemodell von der Antike bis in die Neuzeit, in: Klaus Grubmüller, Ruth Schmidt-Wiegand, Klaus Speckenbach (ed.): Geistliche Denkformen in der Literatur des Mittelalters (Münsterische Mittelalter-­ Schriften, Band 51), München: Wilhelm Fink 1984, p. 401–434. Prange, Regine: Das Tableau vivant als Metapher des Videobildes. Zur Utopie des postkinematografischen Kinos in Godards Passion (1982), published in 2017 on ART-Dok.: https://doi. org/10.11588/artdok.00005121 (last accessed 15.05.2021). RealFiction-Filmvereih: Presseheft des zum Start der Wiederaufführung von Europa am 21. Juli 2005, online verfügbar unter URL: http://www.realfictionfilme.de/presse/index_repertoire.php (unter „EUROPA/LARS VON TRIER – EUROPA TRILOGIE 3“, last accessed 06.06.2020). Soukorov, Alexander: Francofonia, DVD. Paris: Ideale Audience, 2015. Vancheri, Luc: Cinéma et peinture. Paris: Armand Colin 2007. Vasari, Giorgio: Le Vite de’ più eccellenti architetti, pittori, et scultori italiani. Florenz: Torrentino 1550. Vasari, Giorgio: Le vite de’ più eccellenti pitori, scultori, e architettori. Florenz: Giunti 1568. Vendrix, Philippe (Hg.): Johannes Ciconia: musicien de la transition. Turnhout: Brepols 2003. Von Trier, Lars: Europa, DVD. London: Tartan 2002.

 See above, note 26.  Prange, Regine: Das Tableau vivant als Metapher des Videobildes. Zur Utopie des postkinematografischen Kinos in Godards Passion (1982), published in 2017 on ART-Dok.: https://doi. org/10.11588/artdok.00005121 (last accessed 15.05.2021), p.  27 sees Godard’s film also as an emanation of a post-cinematic utopia. 40 41

Maps, Zones Figurations of Europe in Lars von Trier’s Early Films Stephan Kammer

1 “E” as in Europe? It is a commonplace that the history of Europe is more the history of an idea than that of a clearly defined geographical continent. As is well known, Europe’s borders are not only variable in the ‘East’, but have also always given rise to the most diverse considerations in other peripheral zones: In view of its eminent historical importance for Greek and Roman antiquity as well as for the history of Christianity, should one not constitutively count the entire Mediterranean region as part of Europe, much more so than the formerly wild, barbaric regions in the far north beyond the Alps? The myth of Europa at any rate, this Phoenician king’s daughter abducted by Zeus to Crete, would speak for it. Do the British Isles form part of it, or do they form a geographically and culturally safe refuge from continental turmoil? Does Europe stand for the extended cultural succession of the Latin (linguistic) Empire or rather for the proof of its overcoming? The series of such questions could easily be multiplied; they indicate that the definition of ‘Europe’ has always been based on a mixture of geographical, historical, religious, linguistic and political ties and influences. The weight given to any one of these factors may change, as may the relationship between them. But hardly any of them, taken in isolation, is likely to have been permanently decisive for what might be called, in a strong sense, ‘European identity’. A responsive history of ‘Europe’ would have to be one of modes of thought, speech, representation and action. And instead of speaking of the always questionable ‘European identity’, it might be better to call the objects underlying this history ‘Europeanisms’, loosely following Edward Said, or to try to describe their relational fates with Benedict Anderson’s paradigm as attempts to

S. Kammer (*) Department I, German Philology, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_9

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found ‘imagined communities’.1 Especially when it comes to the history of representation and imagination in Europe2 – which is by no means the only one – one would be well advised to avoid any kind of substantialism. Indeed, the consequences of this complexity have become apparent precisely in this history since it has been reconstructed in repeated major attempts, beginning in the early twentieth century, and initially as a history of ideas. ‘Europe’, as these works have shown, is an (early) modern project:3 a chronotopos and an imaginary setting rather than a given, which can only be understood in the contexts of its respective uses, determined by numerous and diverse relations of exclusion and inclusion.4 Lars von Trier contributed to the imaginative history of Europe, which does not understand its object as a continent or an institution but rather designs it as a semiotic product or project, with a trilogy of films between 1984 and 1991. The Element of Crime (1984), Epidemic (1987) and Europa (1991) have been assembled into a trilogy whose individual films, at first glance, seem to have little to hold them together beyond the initial letters of the main words in their titles.5 The Element of Crime, chronologically the first film in the subsequent trilogy and von Trier’s first feature-length film, offers in plot and character delineation the artfully madcap reimagining of a classic film noir narrative in which the already topical carryover between the processes of detective fiction and psychoanalysis must be present. Epidemic continues and rewrites the pointedly metaleptic film-within-a-film mise en abyme of experimental cinema and also short-circuits it with narrative elements of genre cinema, mainly the road movie. Finally, Europe seems to spell the relevant Kracauerian book title backwards in cinematic terms: From Hitler to Caligari (Von Hitler zu Caligari) by linking the peculiar post-war latency of its narrative world, complete with Nazi werewolves, with a visual grammar repeatedly reminiscent of the cinematic language of Expressionism. Beyond the mere assertion of the trilogy, beyond the assonance of the first words of its titles or the production chronology within von Trier’s oeuvre, what connects the three films, which are completely different in terms of visual language, narrative grammar and diegesis? What, in turn, explains the metalepsis of the third film’s title  Cf. Said, Edward: Orientalism. New  York: Pantheon 1978; Anderson, Benedict: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso 1983. 2  Regarding the more recent literary history of these imaginations, cf. Lützeler, Paul Michael: Die Schriftsteller und Europa. Von der Romantik bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: Piper 1992. 3  Cf. Burke, Peter: Did Europe Exist before 1700?, in: History of European Ideas, Vol. 1 (1980), pp. 21–29. 4  For fundamental information, cf. Todorov, Tzvetan: European Identity, in: South Central Review 25 (2008), Vol. 3, pp. 3–15. 5  Incidentally, this also only applies to their international titles: Trier, Lars von (D): Forbrydelsens element [The Element of Crime] (DK 1984; 104′); Trier, Lars von (R): Epidemic (DK 1987; 106′); Trier, Lars von (R): Europa (DK/S/F/D/CH 1991; 112′); Cf. Galt, Rosalind: Visualizing Past and Present Europe in “Zentropa”, in: Cinema Journal 45 (2005), pp. 3–12; Koutsourakis, Angelos: “You Want to Wake up to Free Yourself of the Image of Europa. But It Is Not Possible”: Lars von Trier’s Critique of the European Narrative of Progress in His Europa Trilogy, in: Journal of Contemporary European Studies 20 (2012), pp. 517–535. 1

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to that of the entire trilogy? The director himself has been rather evasive about both connections, i.e. about the origin and titling of the trilogy. When Stig Björkman remarked that the ‘Europe’ of the films Element of Crime and Europe itself seems “almost identical to Germany”, he responded: It probably is to a Dane. Because if you look down towards Europe, the first thing you see is Germany. Seen from Denmark, Germany is Europe, which is obviously an unfair view. There’s also a fairly large country called France, and a boot-shaped country called Italy, but they’re more difficult to see from the Danish horizon.6

In a workshop discussion with Peter Kremski, von Trier affirmed this peculiar identification in a different way, not without, however, mentioning two further arguments for a correlation, this time plot-related but in part contradictory and moreover scarcely supported by the film narratives themselves. On the one hand, he stated, the plot is, on the whole, the same in all three films: “An idealist enters a dangerous environment and ends up just as corrupt.” However, this narrative formula does not really fit any of the films or protagonists  – at most, Dr. Mesmer, the hero of the intradiegetic improvised plot of Epidemic, may correspond to it to some extent; but even there, neither idealism nor corruption really stand up to a closer look as categories for describing and ordering the relationship between character and environment. On the other hand, von Trier also claimed the following: We are not telling a story about Europe and we don’t want to raise awareness of what is currently happening or what has happened historically or where Europe is heading. The films in the trilogy are fairy tales. The whole trilogy is about Europe without me being able to explain exactly why. In any case, since these are not documentaries, you shouldn’t take that statement too literally. The trilogy is more about feelings and cultural aspects that are important for the image I have of Europe.7

The explanations are – admittedly, and perhaps also programmatically – as diffuse as they are contradictory: one may take one’s pick among geopolitical perspectivism, a character-related fable regarding contamination with tragic overtones, or the affective subjectivism of a director or a genre as reasons why the three films should be grouped into a trilogy under the name Europe? One can hardly be satisfied with this – and one need not be if one asks the question of whether and how one can suggest a reference to ‘Europe’ that is neither arbitrary nor a mere assertion in the case of cinematic texts that are so different. In the following, I will attempt to work out elements of a condensed formal coupling of the three films on the basis of two concepts of a (cinematic) spatial semiotics or spatial semantics: the map and the zone. Whether they are already capable of satisfying the strict aesthetic formal requirements for a trilogy may be left open since comparable forms of a ‘Europe’ projection can at least be traced from them.  Trier on von Trier, edited by Stig Björkman, translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith. London: Faber and Faber Limited 2003, p. 70. 7  Kremski, Peter: Werkstattgespräch mit Lars von Trier zu seiner Trilogie The Element of Crime, Epidemic, und Europa, in: filmbulletin 177 (1991), p. 60. 6

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2 Maps A first correlating moment can be observed in the tension between maps or functionally map-like diagrammatic objects and diegesis, which all three films use. These cartographic elements are most clearly visible in The Element of Crime since they are explicitly embedded in the film’s narrative and structure.8 Let me first briefly outline the narrative structure of the film: the fram narrative, which remains open since it is not resolved at the end of the film, is an anamnestic situation. We learn about it from the analyst’s speech (which initially begins as an off-screen voice). Fisher, a former policeman, has travelled from Egypt to Europe for two months after a 13-year absence to take part in the investigation of a serial murder case. Upon returning to Cairo, he hopes to sort out the contradiction between “phantasy” and “facts” that arose during the investigation and is causing him symptomatic headaches. Fisher is to be treated with a combination of talking cure and hypnosis, as was characteristic of early psychoanalysis. In his Kurzer Abriß der Psychoanalyse (A Short Account of Psychoanalysis), published in 1924, i.e. long after hypnosis had been excluded from the psychoanalytic setting, Freud stated that the unconscious “it became something actual, tangible and subject to experiment” in “the phenomena of hypnotism”.9 However, the focus of the cure as initiated in The Element of Crime then does – blatantly – violate the premise developed in the retrospective psychoanalytic review of methodology that such hypnosis is essentially “suggestion aimed against the manifestation of the symptoms”.10 On the contrary, the analyst sends the hypnotized policeman on his way – and by no means just metaphorically – into the scene of the trauma itself. The initial anamnesis reads: “Europe has become an obsession to you”, and with a fade-out and the title introduction, which mark the boundary between the frame narrative and the interior narrative, Fisher’s voice-over, which is used throughout the rest of the narrative, is introduced; the voice of the analyst will also occasionally return as a rhythmic voice-over within the interior narrative. However, the two voices must be regarded as fragments of an incomplete dialogic framework since the narrative also ends in this speech situation, making it clear that the rapport crucial to the hypnotic situation has been interrupted: “I want to wake up now. Are you there? You could wake me up now. Are you there?” are Fisher’s paradoxical last words; the second question is only asked after the title has dissolved, the diegesis has faded out, and the credits have already begun to roll. Fisher’s phatic questions, on the other hand, are not by chance also tied to the situationally ambiguous semantics of spatial orientation – where is ‘there’ in the situation of hypnotic memory? Thus, thanks to this open framework narrative, we find ourselves literally in a situation of not only endless but also limitless analysis,  For comments on this, see Shapiro, Michael J.: A Philopoetic Engagement: Deleuze and The Element of Crime, in: Theory & Event 18.2 (2005), https://www-proquest-com.emedien.ub.unimuenchen.de/docview/1673958796?accountid=14596. 9  Freud, Sigmund: Short Account of Psycho-Analysis, Standard Edition XIX, p. 192. 10  Freud, Sigmund: Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Standard Edition XVI, p. 448. 8

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and this applies not only to the narrative structure of this account, which abounds at all sign levels with allusions to psychoanalysis and the first detective Oedipus – “I need to know everything. […] I cannot stop until I understand”, Fisher says to his lover Kim, after he believes he has solved the riddle of the serial killings or rather recognized its pattern. If, namely, the narrative staging is based on the described figuration of a hypnosis-induced talking cure, the logic of the diegesis itself is based on the aforementioned cartographic diagrammatics. we hear the analyst’s voice-­ over again after a good hour: “Mr. Fisher, where are you?” “Europe, it must be,” Fisher replies. As the camera passes over plant identification maps of European provenance scattered on the floor, Umbria, Franconia, Catalonia, an understanding is reached regarding the continuation of the cure, the narrative and Fisher’s quest alike: “Do you want to continue?” – “I have to”. Fisher’s (self-)exploration is accordingly stretched between two maps that also symmetrically structure the film’s narrative time. We see the first one after about half an hour into the film, on a wall in the room of Fisher’s criminological mentor Osborne. It shows a square composed of the serial killer’s four crime scenes. One reads: Halbestadt, Friedingen, Oberdorf, and Neukalkau. However, the diagrammatic assessment of this map might be at least as important as the fictional reference claim: “the corners of a perfect square.” The “route” of the crime, as Osborne calls it, is a serpentine-like path through this cartographic diagram. In any case, the criminologist seems to be oriented more towards diagrammatic mediality than towards a potentially indexical function of the map when he considers the arrangement of the series of murders, which, according to him, have long since been solved, and which ended with the death of the suspect Harry Gray, to be “a nice little geometric puzzle”. Fisher, however, disturbs the ‘perfect’ geometric figure by inscribing in it the location of the new, fifth case, thus shifting the functional weighting of the diagram in favour of the map. His index finger marks it (Fig.  1; 33:46): the crime scene

Fig. 1  Screenshot from: Lars von Trier: Forbrydelsens element (1984)

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Fig. 2  Screenshot from: Lars von Trier: Forbrydelsens element (1984)

remains in the frame and yet, as the fifth, falls out of the pattern: “So then, tell me: If the square describes a closed figure, this must be an opening,” Osborne comments accordingly, thus anticipating, still arguing more geometrico, Fisher’s reenactment of the search for the murderer. The second map – shown to us in the scene that follows the above-mentioned understanding regarding the continuation of the narrative and the search – emerges barely half an hour before the end of the film from Fisher’s now no longer deictic manipulation of this opening fifth point; a manipulation that moves this point to the centre and makes it the tipping and mirroring point of the map diagram and narrative, of the place and time relationships (Fig. 2): If we take the harbor in Innenstadt as the center, take the first four murders and duplicate them, we get two points: Dritten Marsk, Halle. We don’t just have a geometrical figure, but a letter. If the system is going to be closed like this, he will commit his seventh and last murder in Halle in ten to fifteen days.

Cartography and diegesis are thus intertwined, in accordance with a pattern of reference between the “epic and medial-technical dimension” that, according to Lothar van Laak, is generally characteristic of Lars von Trier’s films.11 In the following intermediate scene, horizontal and vertical camera movements over repeatedly superimposed map sections or remnants, especially of Central Germany – one can decipher “Holzminden”, “Rüthen” and “Dessau” (1:13:50–1:14:24) – again prefigure the future search for murders and murderers. Structurally, the transmission relations of cartography and diegesis are quite comparable in the other two films of the trilogy. In Europe, the corresponding divergence between the extension of what is now in fact a European diagrammatic network of routes, a pre-war and wartime layout, as it were, and the rudimentary reopening of rail traffic in the German autumn of 1945 is easily integrated into the  Laak, Lothar van: Medien und Medialität des Epischen in Literatur und Film des 20. Jahrhunderts. Bertolt Brecht – Uwe Johnson – Lars von Trier. Munich: Wilhelm Fink 2009, p. 307. 11

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Fig. 3  Screenshot from: Lars von Trier: Europa (1991)

narrative of the fortunes and entanglements of the returning emigrant’s son Leopold Kessler, who wants to become a sleeping car porter for the Zentropa railway company (Fig. 3). Incidentally, he too is transferred by hypnosis from a frame, but this time unmarked, at the beginning into the narrative and to Europa, at the end out of it and into death – and grammatically at least, at the closing of this frame, a differently addressed, no longer diegetically bound metalepsis is hinted at, while Leopold’s corpse floats down the river towards the ocean: “In the morning, the sleeper has found rest on the bottom of the river. […] You want to wake up, to free yourself of the image of Europa, but it is not possible.” Finally, Epidemic uses cartographic diagrammatics in the frame narrative of the two screenwriters Lars and Niels, who want to make up for the manuscript lost due to disk damage entitled The Inspector and the Whore – a producer allegedly originally wanted The Element of Crime to have this title – by telling the story of the naïve epidemiologist Dr. Mesmer. In one scene, Niels paints the structural progression of the plot on the wall and marks the dramatically relevant functional points (Fig. 4). It diagrammatically anticipates what the two will hand over to their producer on the fifth day: The “technical description of the plot of a film”, as Niels will put it, immediately before the newly hypnotic interweaving of frame and interior narrative renders all that obsolete at the end. The cinematic deployments of the maps throughout the trilogy share a certain form of representation, of a mise-en-image that brings the – to use Christine Buci-­ Glucksmann’s term – ‘impure’ sign and media status of the map into the image and, more importantly, into the diegesis: The ‘impure and complex abstraction’ of the map,12 which may be temporarily immobilized in the single, still image, revealing  Cf. Buci-Glucksmann, Christine: Une abstraction impure: De Marcel Duchamp á la cartographie, in: Trans > Magazine 3/4 (1996), URL: http://www.transmag.org/nuevo_transmag/nuevodiseno/content/vols.php?vista=issue&tipoview=Essays&view=98 (last accessed on 06.06.2020): “Car la carte est par nature un abstract qui renvoie à un plan-transfert où le monde est comme projeté en aplat. Connectable à tout, elle hante les surfaces comme les trajets de tous les cartoramas 12

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Fig. 4  Screenshot from: Lars von Trier: Epidemic (1987)

its semiotic abysses only in use or transcription, as a diagram of a film narrative haunts that narrative itself without further delay with its inherent ambiguity. The representation has, in any case, left only snippets – if anything at all – of the classical cartographic mediality of an “index in paper form”; as a functional “interconnected system of virtual spatial indices”, however, it seems no less ruined.13 To be sure, von Trier’s film narratives repeatedly seek to remedy the main semiotic challenge posed by the map’s media,14 namely the deictic questionability provoked by its mobility, by immobilizing maps and cartographic diagrams on walls. Fisher’s crime scene maps do this, as does the plot diagram of the two filmmakers Lars and Niels in Epidemic, and this applies to the network map in Europe anyway – it is, however, literally overlaid by the contingent fracture marks in the cover glass, which at best quote diagrammatics iconically. Accordingly, even these attempts at fixation are unable to exorcise the ambiguity of reference and prefiguration by means of which the cartographic diagrams transfer the narrative spaces they address into cinematic diegesis. The question of whether these cartographic diagrams mark out or prescribe paths and relations – and thus ‘plot’ – can hardly be answered conclusively. For if (in the words of Michel de Certeau) spatiality is thus designed as an “polyvalent unity of conflictual programs”, the action-stabilizing complement of

possibles de l’art, et son retour actuel traduit à lui seul les nouveaux enjeux de l’abstraction contemporaine. Une abstraction impure et complexe, sans plan de projection privilégié, qui sanctionne l’épuisement du paradigme formaliste et moderniste.”. 13  Stockhammer, Robert: “An dieser Stelle”. Kartographie und die Literatur der Moderne, in: Poetica 33 (2001), p. 280. 14  Cf. Ibid., p. 283.

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“contractual proximities” that could frame these conflict programs is missing.15 In terms of representation, this means that neither plot nor figure drawing nor the genuinely cinematic means of shot or montage can be harnessed for such an agreement, which would allow the ambiguity of the cartographic diagrams, as disturbing as it is productive, to be defused. The maps in Lars von Trier’s Europe trilogy are consistently dis/orienting. The perspectivism and situativity of these diagrams thus form at least equal states of play in a spatial semiotic figuration – and this at least does not seem structurally so far from the anamorphic ‘Danish’ perspective on Europe that von Trier claimed in his conversation with Björkman.

3 Zones The examples may have already suggested it: Cartographic referentiality or pragmatics are certainly not incidental in this peculiar cinematic use of media. When Osborne speaks of a “geography of crime” in The Element of Crime; when Udo in Epidemic retells the story of his mother’s escape from bombed Cologne, entrusted to him on her deathbed, complete with street names; or when Niels doubles the two filmmakers’ Autobahn journey with a litany of city names; when, in Epidemic’s intradiegetic plague narrative, the doctors who have taken over the regime in the quarantined city carelessly burn down the museum, the university, and the library: under these conditions, we are dealing with a kind of narrated and narrative space to which Leopold’s uncle in Europe, with meaningful emphasis, gives the term “zone”. In this, the principle of dis/orientation, which the cartographic diagrams of the films figure and make diegetically fruitful, becomes constitutive. Frauke Berndt has defined the zone as a “dynamic concept”; it “functions like a machine that generates relations” by dissolving “both the spatial boundaries (mimetic level) and the boundaries between I and You (pragmatic level) as well as the syntactic and semantic boundaries (hermeneutic level)”.16 The zone begins its aesthetic career in the articulations of the avant-garde around 1900; Guillaume Apollinaire’s eponymous narrative poem of 1913 not only makes this starting point tangible in paratextual terms, but may itself already be the first Europa figuration to make use of these spatial and geo-semantics: without a doubt, “Europe”, named early in the poem, is the main setting of this aesthetic spatial (experience) design.17 Aleksandar Flaker has shown the extent to which the “time and space shifts” in Apollinaire’s poem are committed to a ‘simultanism’ shared by the aesthetic avant-gardes of the epoch and with which they react not least to the experiential horizons of the technically or medially  Certeau, Michel de: The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press 1984, p. 117. 16  Berndt, Frauke: Zones. Zur Konzeptualisierung von Ambiguität in der ästhetischen Theorie, in: Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, Sonderheft 16 (2018): Ambiguity in Contemporary Art and Theory, ed. by Frauke Berndt and Lutz Koepnick, pp. 18 and 24. 17  Apollinaire, Guillaume: Zone, in: idem, Alcools. Poèmes 1898–1913. 3rd ed. Paris: Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française 1920, pp. 7–15. 15

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reorganized traffic in bodies and signs.18 The temporal and spatial simultaneity effects that the aesthetic concept of the zone entails, however, remain virulent as forms of representation beyond the modernist avant-gardes of the early twentieth century. One should mention Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker (1979), a film, incidentally, that is part of von Trier’s canon, which he has invoked time and again19; no less significant is Thomas Pynchon’s great novel Gravity’s Rainbow (1973), in the third part of which the aesthetic concept of the zone has experienced what is possibly its most radical literary shaping, and which I would like to refer to without hesitation as the reference text for the three films. On the one hand, zones thus come closest to the performative spatiality that Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari have described as translation and transformation between ‘smooth’ and striated spaces: No sooner do we note a simple opposition between the two kinds of space than we must indicate a much more complex difference by virtue of which the successive terms of the oppositions fail to coincide entirely. And no sooner have we done that than we must remind ourselves that the two spaces in fact exist only in mixture: smooth space is constantly being translated, transversed into a striated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth space.20

On the other hand, zones are formed from the diffuse, ambiguous polyphony of speech and sign events, as described by Mikhail Bakhtin already in the first half of the twentieth century and, following him, Yuri M. Lotman. In his essay On the Semiosphere (1984), Lotman got to the heart of what this ambiguity of aesthetic zones generates: “semiotic contacts between two worlds”,21 and this contact is no more limited to concrete spatial configurations than the worlds it connects. Zones, understood in this way, form the sites of the “conflict between linguistically organized systems that are thought spatially”22  – whereby “linguistically organized” may well be understood structurally: in view of the theoretical tradition in which the reflections on the concept of the zone are located, in the sense of Jakobson’s understanding of “language” as a sign system with syntagmatic and paradigmatic dimensions. In von Trier’s trilogy, at any rate, we find a tableau of such contact zones that seems to leave no level of cinematic representation out of the equation and thus by no means finds expression solely in the described formations of relations between space and action figured by the ambiguity of the map. The truly conspicuous metaleptic irritations that one encounters everywhere constitute only the most conspicuous forms of design in this respect, when, as in The Element of Crime or Epidemic, they sabotage the architecture of diegetic planes as well as the orientation of the characters in their narrated spaces. And the zone-building rules of “juxtaposition, interpolation, superimposition, and  Flaker, Aleksandar: Zone. Raumgestaltung in der Dichtung der Avantgarde, in: Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 60 (2001), p. 283. 19  Regarding the general cinematic-intertextual universe of von Trier’s early films (mainly Europa), cf. Weinrichter, Antonio: Europa. El capricho alemán de von T., in: Nosferatu 39 (2002), pp. 46–50. 20   Deleuze, Gilles/Guattari, Félix: A Thousand Plateaux. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press 1987, p. 474. 21  Lotman, Jurij M.: On the Semiosphere, in: Sign Systems Studies 33 (2005), p. 211. 22  Berndt (2018, p. 28). 18

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misattribution”,23 listed by Brian McHale in his overview, also control the films’ image compositions and settings: Lighting (light/dark), colour (black and white/ colour film), montage (cut/blend), etc. The aesthetic zones of von Trier’s films create “a purely cinematographic world built only by filmic means”.24 Europe as a zone: this conception of the trilogy’s representation also makes plausible the claim just formulated that the three films perhaps find their most striking reference text in Thomas Pynchon’s narrative encyclopaedia of the twentieth century, Gravity’s Rainbow. The most striking coincidence here is surely the chronotopos of immediate post-war Germany that the aforementioned third novel unfolds and which it shares with von Trier’s Europa. The intertextual contact is already established by the “many trains”25 in which Slothrop, the hero of the novel, crosses the zone  – the historical zone in which the aspiring sleeping car porter Leopold Kessler is also travelling; trains to which one of the songs is dedicated, which structure Pynchon’s grand narrative like the maps do those of von Trier’s films: Slothrop sat in the swaying car with thirty other cold and tattered souls, eyes all pupil, lips cratered with sores. They were singing, some of them. A lot of them kids. It is a Displaced Person’s song, and Slothrop will hear it often around the Zone, in the encampments, out on the road, in a dozen variations: If you see a train this evening, Far away against the sky, Lie down in your wooden blanket, Sleep, and let the train go by. Trains have called us, every midnight, From a thousand miles away, Trains that pass through empty cities, Trains that have no place to stay. No one drives the locomotive, No one tends the staring light, Trains have never needed riders, Trains belong to bitter night. Railway stations stand deserted, Rights-of-way lie clear and cold: What we left them, trains inherit, Trains go on, and we grow old. Let them cry like cheated lovers, Let their cries find only wind. Trains are meant for night and ruin. We are meant for song, and sin.26

The specific form in which this intertextual relationship is articulated would have to be explored in more detail, but this cannot be pursued further here. One cannot dismiss the suspicion that the last film in the trilogy redimensioned the global ‘zoning’  McHale, Brian: Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Routledge 1987, p. 45.  Simons, Jan: Von Trier’s Cinematic Games, in: Journal of Film and Video 60 (2008), p. 6. 25  Pynchon, Thomas: Gravity’s Rainbow. London: Vintage Books 2000, p. 335. 26  Ibid., p. 338. 23 24

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of Pynchon’s novel in a (central) European way – Zentropa – so that its ‘Europe’, for all the dystopian facets of its representation and its decentralising effects, is also re-territorialized and thus in a certain sense falls short of the radicality, both conceptual and representational, of Gravity’s Rainbow. For what narrative, however, would the latter not apply? But such correspondences and allusions can be found not only with Europa, in which the proximity to Pynchon’s novel is already abundantly clear in the narrated world of the film. I will limit myself to two references: one of Pynchon’s ambiguous and dubious figures on the “chessboard of the Zone” is called “der Springer”27; the knight is the glass chess piece that the murderer in The Element of Crime leaves behind at his crime scenes. If one wanted to make a film of Pynchon’s novel, the visual-aesthetic depiction of several of his zone locations could probably not be very different than that in the first film of the trilogy, with its peculiarly ruined, indeterminately post-apocalyptic Europe. And even the (naturally cartographically structured) journey of the protagonists Niels and Lars to the headquarters of Bayer AG in Leverkusen, from which they return in the frame story of Epidemic with a travel bag full of Alka-Seltzer, looks in this context like a parodic counterfactual of Slothrop’s meandering investigations into IG Farben and his own history. At the end of The Element of Crime, the soundtrack fades to a chanson almost simultaneously with the start of the credits, shortly after Fisher’s final question has died away, its arrangement and lyrics laying the final trail of the film. “I search in bleeding Europe / for what I searched for in exile, / I searched for arts, eternally colourful gardens/ with images of Rembrandt and verses of Virgil,” the lyrics begin in the soundtrack to the end credits. Although it is sung in German, it is not a German chanson, as the credits themselves indicate, but an adaptation of a successful 1948 recording by the Danish actress and singer Lulu Ziegler: Den siste turist i Europa, composed by Henrik Blichmann and with lyrics by Mogens Dam. The journey of this last tourist in Europe tells of a half-desperate, half-hopeful stocktaking in the stillsmoking ruins of the recent war; he promises at the end – though this was not included in von Trier’s adaptation for the end credits – to be the first to be there again when Europe one day rises like a phoenix from the ashes:Under asken vil der vågne et liv! Fordi du er som fugl Fønix, Europa! Lad dem kun brænde dig og skænde din sjæl der vil dog altid spire nye, unge blomster om din splintrede søjlekapitæl. Jeg var den sidste turist i Europa, der veg forfærdet for våbnenes gny jeg er den første turist i Europa, når det rejser sig af asken på ny!28

 Ibid., p. 447.  An easily accessible recording is the following, with pianist Robert Levin, URL: https://www. youtube.com/watch?v=WftN7G3MctU (last accessed on 06.06.2020); the text can be found at URL: https://www.festabc.dk/1/den-sidste-turist-i-europa (last accessed on 06.06.2020). 27 28

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It is in this ambiguity of the first and last tourist in Europe that the protagonists see themselves, and in which the narratives of the three films are locked. Imagining Europe as a zone also means mobilizing a model of understanding about Europe, which, according to Peter Burke and Tzvetan Todorov, must be shaped around the following three cores of imagination: Demarcation against a (hostile) outside, transmission potentials of a foreign gaze, the conflict potential of internal differences.29 They all recur in the internal relations of the characters and narratives. The relational machine of the cinematic zones overwrites spatial boundaries, right down to the details of the sometimes technically highly elaborate image compositions; with its fascination for hypnotic anamneses and other states, it overwrites subject boundaries; with its narrative metalepsis, it overwrites the sensory boundaries of narrative modelling. The optimism that Blichmann’s and Dam’s phoenix fable hints at in the end, however, is eliminated from the Europa Trilogy, as is the humour of Pynchon’s novel.

References Anderson, Benedict: Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London: Verso 1983. Apollinaire, Guillaume: Zone, in: Ders., Alcools. Poèmes 1898–1913. 3rd Edition, Paris: Éditions de la Nouvelle Revue Française 1920, pp. 7–15. Berndt, Frauke: Zonen. Zur Konzeptualisierung von Ambiguität in der ästhetischen Theorie, in: Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und Allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, Sonderheft 16 (2018): Ambiguity in Contemporary Art and Theory, edited by Frauke Berndt and Lutz Koepnick, pp. 18 and 24. Buci-Glucksmann, Christine: Une abstraction impure: De Marcel Duchamp á la cartographie, in: Trans > Magazine 3/4 (1996), URL: http://www.transmag.org/nuevo_transmag/nuevodiseno/ content/vols.php?vista=issue&tipoview=Essays&view=98 (last accessed on 06.06.2020) Burke, Peter: Did Europe Exist before 1700?, in: History of European Ideas 1 (1980), pp. 21–29. Certeau, Michel de: The Practice of Everyday Life. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press 1984. Deleuze, Gilles/Guattari, Félix: A Thousand Plateaux. Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press 1987. Flaker, Aleksandar: Zone. Raumgestaltung in der Dichtung der Avantgarde, in: Zeitschrift für Slavische Philologie 60 (2001). Galt, Rosalind: Visualizing Past and Present Europe in „Zentropa“, in: Cinema Journal 45 (2005), pp. 3–12 Koutsourakis, Angelos: “You Want to Wake up to Free Yourself of the Image of Europa. But It Is Not Possible”: Lars von Trier’s Critique of the European Narrative of Progress in His Europa Trilogy, in: Journal of Contemporary European Studies 20 (2012), pp. 517–535. Kremski, Peter: Werkstattgespräch mit Lars von Trier zu seiner Trilogie The Element of Crime, Epidemic, und Europa, in: filmbulletin 177 (1991). Laak, Lothar van: Medien und Medialität des Epischen in Literatur und Film des 20. Jahrhunderts. Bertolt Brecht – Uwe Johnson – Lars von Trier. München: Wilhelm Fink 2009. Lotman, Jurij M.: On the Semiosphere, in: Sign Systems Studies 33 (2005). Lützeler, Paul Michael: Die Schriftsteller und Europa. Von der Romantik bis zur Gegenwart. München: Piper 1992.

 Cf. Burke (1980); Todorov (2008).

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McHale, Brian: Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Routledge 1987. Pynchon, Thomas: Gravity’s Rainbow. London: Vintage Books 2000. Said, Edward: Orientalism. New York: Pantheon 1978. Shapiro, Michael J.: A Philopoetic Engagement: Deleuze and TheElement of Crime, in: Theory & Event 18.2 (2005), https://www-­proquest-­com.emedien.ub.uni-­muenchen.de/docvie w/1673958796?accountid=14596. Simons, Jan: Von Trier’s Cinematic Games, in: Journal of Film and Video 60 (2008). Stockhammer, Robert: „An dieser Stelle“. Kartographie und die Literatur der Moderne, in: Poetica 33 (2001). Todorov, Tzvetan: European Identity, in: South Central Review 25 (2008), Vol. 3, pp. 3–15. Trier on von Trier, edited by Stig Björkman, translated from the Swedish by Neil Smith. London: Faber and Faber Limited 2003. Weinrichter, Antonio: Europa. El capricho alemán de von T., in: Nosferatu 39 (2002), pp. 46–50.

To Believe in Europe? The EU in Two Contemporary Documentaries Johannes Wende

A young couple stands closely embraced on an Irish cliff. The camera filming them from behind lowers a little, slowly revealing the sea and the horizon line in the background. Now, of all times, the sun breaks through the clouds and shines on the two of them. “Are we okay?” the young woman asks, and after a brief pause, the young man replies, “Yes.” The credits roll, and the documentary Europe, she loves from 2016 ends with this shot. That this short dialogue could be about more than just two young people is what this film refers to both in the title and in the opening credits, in which a whole series of EU politicians can be seen. As a voice-over to these images, Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament, talks about the great merits and advantages that the citizens of the EU should be proud of, despite all the problems. On a most personal level, then, the final shot of the documentary Europe, she loves negotiates a question that has preoccupied the discussion of the European Union as a whole since the beginning of the financial crisis in 2007/2008: “Are we okay?” – Does this community still have confidence in the future? Are we going to stay together? Are we still well enough, after all, for this union not to disintegrate into its single parts? Europe, she loves is a film that shows the problems of four different young couples in parallel narratives. Again and again, the daily news coverage of the upheavals of the financial crisis is sprinkled into the montage as a unifying element. By ending with this image and this dialogue, the film professes at a crucial point to have a positive outlook – and yet has previously provided every reason to take it with scepticism: For in the scenes before, the young couple from Ireland have still relapsed together; they have smoked heroin again, even though they had firmly resolved to stop. They have not yet managed withdrawal; so the young man’s “yes” earns the audience’s doubts. Finally, two of the four other narrative strands of this film also end with a break-up: The young couple from Greece lose each other on J. Wende (*) Department I – Media Studies, HFF – University of Television and Film, Munich, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_10

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LSD in a psychedelic stupor, the young woman from Spain leaves her country behind, driving away at night on the motorway while her boyfriend patrols as a security guard in front of a ruined building at night. In contrast, the documentary Democracy (2015) tells the story of the European community project from a seemingly completely different perspective: The young Green MEP Jan Philipp Albrecht is tasked by the EU Parliament with drafting a new data protection directive for the online age, which is to be approved both by the Parliament and later by the Commission. When gridlock threatens at the dramatic turning point and failure seems inevitable because too many powerful lobby representatives seek to prevent agreement, only a deus ex machina helps: The revelations of Edward Snowden activate public opinion in such a way that even business-liberal and conservative parties endorse the draft law. And although this means that the protagonist triumphs in the end, the film does not show this success in propagandistic glorification: Its black-and-white images mainly show the many exhausting conversations with different stakeholders in meetings and in the breaks in between. The “happy ending” consists of a round of champagne in the hallway and a few cell phone photos in small groups. So again, in the end, you might say, “we’re okay” for this time. But what the future holds can be expected with skepticism. In the final image of this film, a helicopter with a surveillance camera flies behind a horizon showing the dilapidated Acropolis complete with the scaffolding of the restorers. This shot suggests that the project of democratic community order can indeed refer to a legendary historical model – but that its preservation today requires entirely unheroic micro-work. These two recent documentaries, which show young people coming to terms with Europe, explicitly address the question of what state Europe is in today and what future it faces. Neither shows heroes. They show exhausting and confusing everyday life, and their search for common values provokes reasonable doubts. And yet, as this text will try to prove, they are capable of building trust towards the confederation. Unlike the daily media coverage, these two films can promote something that has been missing from public discourse in many quarters in recent years: a belief in Europe. The fact that a largely secular community such as the EU can be linked to experiences of religious faith is made clear by Georg Simmel’s 1906 commentary on the sociological dimensions of religion. Why and how film, of all media, is suitable for reinforcing such faith can also be better understood with the help of considerations from Gilles Deleuze’s film theory.

1 On Faith and Community, on Film and Faith At the end of Democracy, the EU Parliament managed to pass a data protection law. A few years earlier, however, the attempt to adopt a common constitution was not successful; among other things, the question of whether it should contain an explicit reference to God was disputed.1 So there is obviously no agreement about the foun  Große Hüttmann, Martin/Wehling, Hans-Georg (eds.): Das Europalexikon. Bonn: Dietz 2013, p. 172. 1

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dation of the EU in religious references. And yet, as Georg Simmel writes, even a non-religious or not-yet-religious belief in a community always bears traits of belief in God. He refers to the testimonies of the historically oldest communities, which had always also been cult communities. Later, for example in imperial Rome, different interest groups had often established a corresponding deity for themselves. Conversely, at that time the goal attributed to these deities was always limited to this group and did not yet extend socially to the idea of “the whole of humanity”. Simmel thereby concludes that any personally felt connection to a larger group of people that goes beyond a mere community of purpose can be conceived of as quasi-­ religious, or at least must be described in terms of faith. It is precisely the social form of a representative democracy, which does not submit all individual decisions to each individual for a vote, but functions through elected representatives: “That we hold fast, beyond all evidence, often against all evidence, to faith in a man or in a totality,  – that is one of the firmest bonds by means of which society hangs together.” And even for avowedly secular connections, Simmel further states: But this faith does not become religious only through its extension into the transcendent, which is rather only a measure and a mode of representation of it, but it is already so in its sociological realization, which is permeated from the outset by the energies of the formal religious function.2

A good example of this entanglement is still offered today by England, where the nominal head of state is at the same time also appointed as the highest representative of the national denomination. Against this background, on the other hand, it seems plausible why France, of all countries, has recently pleaded against a reference to God in an EU constitution – after all, since the Revolution of 1789, the official bodies here have been strongly concerned with a ritual celebration and veneration of the state as a secular entity, which in turn have been described as quasi-religious rituals.3 Of course, none of these considerations can be found directly in the plot of the two films examined. Neither of them gives any hint of a religious motivation of any kind for their characters; neither traditional religions nor a cultic celebration of a social group seem to play a role in the everyday life of the still young couples. Rather, they decidedly take a different perspective: Europe, she loves repeatedly shows the retreat into the innermost, private, with the recurring questions of romantic couple relationships, drug use and personal plans for the future. And although Democracy accompanies the emergence of a new law, the film presents this process primarily as the story of a single protagonist who only exchanges ideas with his coworker on a personal level. But still, although neither film aims to do so, it is argued here, they can convey a belief in the European community. How can this take place? Gilles Deleuze writes in the second part of his 1985 cinema theory, The Time-­ Image (Das Zeit-Bild), of a kinship between religion and cinema. Here, he first  Simmel, Georg: Gesamtausgabe Vol. 10. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 1995, p. 73 f.  Willaime, Jean-Paul: Zivilreligion nach französischem Muster, in: Heinz Kleger, Alois Müller (eds.): Religion des Bürgers. Civil Religion in America and Europe. Munich: Kaiser 1986, pp. 147–174, here: p. 164. 2 3

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points to similarities in the ritual performance and reception of cathedrals and early cinema halls: “Is there not also in Catholicism the great staging? […] Cinema as a whole seems to fall under Nietzsche’s formula: ‘wherein we are still pious’.”4 Here, Deleuze highlights as a central mode of functioning cinema’s ability – unlike theatre – to make the connection between man and the world comprehensible. In the modern era, people lamented the loss of this connection and often used cinematic metaphors themselves: The essential characteristic of modern times is that we no longer believe in this world. We no longer believe even in the events that happen to us: as if they only half concern us, in love and death.. It is not we who make the cinema, it is the world that seems to us to be like a bad movie.5

A diagnosis that seems to fit the characters of Europe, she loves in particular, when they struggle with their heroin addiction like the couple from Ireland, when they see their love relationship of the present suddenly dissolved by separate emigration plans like the Spanish couple, or quite concretely discover physical disgust with each other on a bad LSD trip like the couple from Greece at the end of the film. A belief somehow conveyed through cinema, then, obviously does not have to be shared or mirrored by the characters portrayed in order to be contagious. Rather, at least according to Deleuze, it must be found in the media conditions that constitute a film as a whole. The intellectually more demanding part of this statement refers, of course, to modern film; that is, to a film era in which the modern doubts about the reliability of the world just described have found their cinematic implementation. Here, entire films or individual cinematic situations destroy the often over-emphasized certainties of an action-oriented dramaturgy and of psychologically explicable protagonists. Based on Deleuze’s reflections, Josef Früchtl has repeatedly addressed the question of how modernist films, of all things, can nevertheless (or precisely because of this) restore a “trust in the world” to their viewers.6 However, this insight cannot be applied to our examples without further ado: Observational documentaries can only in exceptional cases be clearly assigned to a cinematic classicism or modernism. At the same time, however, they suggest the “short conclusion” that they made it easier to create a sense of faith, because in them, in contrast to the feature film, the reality shown must have corresponded to an extra-filmic reality. However, the “belief in the world” conveyed by cinema does not mean a belief in the “actual reality” of the documentary film. For even if faith, i.e. a trust in the correctness of this promise, naturally plays an essential role in it, this promise cannot justify the process addressed by Deleuze. Because on the one hand, in his examples of the catholicity of cinema, he explicitly refers to fictional cinema; and on the other hand, the belief that what is shown has taken place cannot alone

 Deleuze, Gilles: Das Zeit-Bild. Kino 2. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 1997, p. 223.  Deleuze (1997, p. 224). 6  Früchtl, Josef: Trust in the World. A philosophy of film. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2013. 4 5

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open up a transcendental reference. Thus, Simmel already writes about the belief in God, “that when the religious person says: I believe in God, something else is meant by it than a certain holding to the truth of his existence. It does not merely say that this existence […] is assumed; but it means a certain inward relation to him […].”7 What possibilities, then, remain instead for the documentary film to nevertheless convey, within the framework of the medially filmic, a faith that points beyond the film alone into the social? The two closest motifs that Deleuze mentions are either recognizably Catholic or else social revolutionary motifs within the film itself – a reference, however, that we have already ruled out for our two films. Centrally, however, he then mentions the question of a connection between man and the world: “The bond between man and the world is torn. Consequently, this bond must become the object of faith”.8 Here, then, we are dealing with a relationship that Hartmut Rosa has recently seen as a central concept of “resonance” (in opposition to the “alienation” of modernity) also potentially located in the religious: Something is there, something is present: […] Religion can then be understood as the idea, made tangible in rites and practices, in songs and stories, and to some extent also in buildings and works of art, that this something is an answering, an accommodating -and an understanding. God is then basically the idea of a responding world.9

An important question for the films examined will therefore be how exactly they are able to highlight this bond between man and the world. In addition, the importance of the unity of the action and the special role of the causality of the action can be cited for classical cinema from Deleuze’s first volume, Das Bewegungs-Bild (The Movement-Image)  – whereby here, too, the considerations of Georg Simmel can be directly connected, since he sees the idea of God as an embodiment of all causality as the vanishing point of all religiosity: To him corresponds the undercurrent of seeking, of “thither, thither,” of restlessness, of which all individual wanting to change is only appearance or part. In that, God is “the goal in general,” he is precisely the goal of seeking in general. This also reveals the deeper meaning of his origin as an absolutization of the causal drive.10

And as a central parallel to social questions he opposes faith to the feeling of a unity of small groups, which essentially defines itself against an “other,” an “outside”: “The synthesis to the group is the prototype of the felt, conscious unity – beyond personality – and its peculiar form is reflected or sublimated in the religious unity of existence held together by the concepts of God.”11

 Simmel (1995, p. 70).  Deleuze (1997, p. 224). 9  Rosa, Hartmut: Resonance. Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 2016, p. 435. 10  Simmel (1995, p. 75 f.). 11  Simmel (1995, p. 78). 7 8

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How concretely can these three features of the cinematic: The functioning connection between man and the world, the causality of events, and their unity, be used in the two films mentioned above to promote a non-rational belief in the European community?

2 The Connection Between Man and the World Democracy begins and ends with an image of a very extreme kind of medial connection between man and the world: The distant shot of a lone, high-flying helicopter to which a camera device is mounted, a “flying eye” in the sky. At the beginning, this image of the flying machine, which is held for a very long time, is slowly inverted, that is, it fades from the “positive” to the “negative”. This first and last image object of the film also stands for the greatest possible alienation between man and the world, an aloof controlling authority that itself appears uncontrollable, unreachable – a symbol of what the film characters are negotiating: For the planned data protection law is precisely intended to protect the population of the EU from revealing their personal data on the Internet without even realizing it, and thus inevitably handing over the power of disposal over them to the large US Internet companies. The political struggle shown in the film is thus also a struggle against the disenfranchisement increasingly developed by contemporary technology. A central and sweeping criticism of the EU is that it is itself largely alienated from its citizens, that Brussels monitors and influences people’s lives down to the last detail, but that this political influence is in turn removed from the control and insight of the individual, appears abstract and distant. The question of a connection between man and the world thus appears doubly inscribed in this film as the central question of its main characters. In turn, as a central design device, he turns something as abstract as the development of a bill into a personal matter by accompanying for most of the time the member of parliament in charge of it, Jan Philipp Albrecht, a member of parliament for the Green Party who, completely in keeping with his party, attaches little importance to bourgeois dress conventions, who speaks in a similar way when chairing a political committee as he does in a personal exchange, and who still discusses this, his central political concern, in conversation with his girlfriend. The abstract project thus becomes personal. But the particular media conditions of the film also strive to connect things that separate daily media. For example, the film shows how EU Commissioner Viviane Reding, in a wide profile shot, deals with a whole group of reporters and cameras pointed at her. In contrast to the television coverage, the film here includes the conditions under which information is given to citizens, just as Viviane Reding’s announcement “I’ll do it first in German, then in English, ok?” can now be seen in the film. A short statement, which is later followed by a long walk through the Commission building, during which the camera always remains behind her, shortly before she steps onto the rostrum for the press conference – the documentary thus makes the multiple “behinds” of the otherwise only abstractly perceivable apparatus, the many demands on its politicians, directly comprehensible. Likewise, it

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repeatedly lets in the outside noises in meetings – for example, those of basketball players, which slowly intensify until the players are actually taken centrally into the picture for an outside shot. The closed-off world of the boardroom also remains embedded in the everyday life of its citizens. Europe, she loves, on the other hand, pursues the almost mirror-opposite project, for its central theme is not “aloof” politics but perhaps the most widespread ideal of successful resonance, the romantic couple relationship. Alongside this, all of the film’s centrally featured characters are striving to connect with the world in mostly very basic ways: They are seeking a job, financial independence, consequences of their political beliefs, they are negotiating a future together as a couple. But by taking a big step closer to its characters than Democracy does – showing them having sex, shoplifting and sharing drugs – this film, on the other hand, provides insight into variations of very existential alienation. The young woman from Greece, for example, vacillates between expressions of love for her partner on the one hand and contempt and disgust on the other. The protagonist from Tallinn, who has previously shown herself to be a loving mother, reveals to her friend that all her problems are actually due to the fact that she gave birth to her children in the first place. And the young Irish woman struggles with the fact that she does not get any confession of his love from her boyfriend when he is sober, but rather is called “my little poo-­ poo”. The undertakings of these film characters are thus, unlike in Democracy, extremely intimate, and in doing so they very centrally question the success of a connection between man and the world. Unlike the narration from the government headquarters, Europe, she loves does not address the special situation of the recording at any point. Although the team of director, sound and camera penetrates even the smallest living spaces, the characters never react to it, never once address it in conversation. On the other hand, the camerawork is highly sensitive to the question of how to react to the movements of those being filmed; it carefully scans them and seems to “sense” them pictorially. Moreover, it remains striking how this film also deals with what is perhaps the most important cinematic operation that stands for a connection between man and the world: the procedure of “shot and counter-shot”. This is a short montage of at least two shots that first shows a figure in close-up, whose field of vision and reactions are recognizably concentrated on something that is not itself contained in the image; whereupon the supposed object of this gaze is shown in a cut immediately afterwards – sometimes even shot in a way (for example softened or blurred) that suggests and at the same time makes it possible to comprehend how the sight itself affected the figure first shown  – a procedure described as specifically cinematic, which perhaps best illustrates why a connection between man and the world can be so comprehensibly represented in (feature) film as in hardly any other art form. The observational documentary film, on the other hand, usually operates with only one camera, and thus cannot as a rule reproduce this actually slightly time-delayed editing sequence of the feature film. Europe, she loves, on the other hand, repeatedly shows conversations in shot-counter-shot or presents apparent atmospheric images of passing flocks of birds as perceived impressions of its characters, immediately followed by a close-up of their faces.

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No one watches the helicopter from Democracy fly away except the film itself. The latter then gets very close to the politicians, who are otherwise stereotypically described as aloof, makes themselves the subject of discussion and thus gives us a glimpse of the connections that exist between “big politics” and the “little people”. The birds from Europe, she loves, on the other hand, will not care at all about the problems of the people below them; but instead, in their perception, they become proxies for their unanswered questions: Do we stay together or do we split up? Do we move with the swarm to where life is easier, or do we stay? By getting extremely close to the characters on the one hand and making themselves disappear on the other, the camera questions apparent certainties such as the romantic couple relationship as the “safe haven” of a connection between man and the world. So, on the one hand, this film very explicitly plumbs the depths of modern alienation, but on the other hand, it also allows its audience to participate directly in moments of resonance experienced by its characters.

3 The Causality of Events If Simmel describes the idea of God as an “absolutization of the causal drive”, film as a medium of narration can tie in with this. In the narrative film, the causality of events remains an essentially inscribed feature that enables it to convey meaning at all.12 Unlike the shot-counter-shot process, this mode of operation applies to the feature film as well as to the documentary. The primacy of causality is also already inscribed in the setting of Democracy. For unlike in authoritarian forms of government, in which a government does not have to explain itself but can rely on mere obedience, the democratic process is a system that first and foremost argues causally: Thus, in the course of the plot, certain hurdles must always be overcome, which are presented as prerequisites for what follows later. In addition, the film shows how all the participants, including the critics of this bill, strive to present their arguments as plausibly as possible in order to win a majority. In the interview for the camera, the political participants intersect quite directly with the film audience. Public opinion can and will also be influenced by this film. And it endeavours to show what happens in it as the logical result of the events presented beforehand. At a very central point, however, the decisive power of chance becomes apparent: when, after about two-thirds of the film, the legislative process seems to have failed because the lobbying has meanwhile exerted its influence, only the deus ex machina in the form of Edward Snowden can help. Only his revelations help the obscure problem of data security on the Internet to wider attention and turn public opinion at the same time in favor of the work of Albrecht. “We have to thank the Americans!” proclaims Viviane Reding, beaming and with undisguised glee – after all, it is primarily the US digital corporations against whose business model the law seeks to provide  Bordwell, David: Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1985, p. 157. 12

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protection. At first glance this dependence on coincidence could weaken trust in EU policy; after all, without Snowden this important project would probably have failed. But only by the fact that even before his revelations politicians were working on the formulation of this law, this moment can be used as a lucky one at all: Without the groundwork shown by the film, the excitement would likely have died down before it came to a decision. In this, the deus ex machina helps the political enterprise succeed in equal measure to the film itself. For to watch the initiative of a young member of parliament fail over months and years due to numerous, relatively undramatic hurdles, before it might have been taken up again at the end, would also have been highly unsatisfactory narratively. The success of the project thus also brings the film to a satisfying end. In questions of narrative causality, too, Europe, she loves is a mirror image of this: For just as hypothetically described for the other film, the ending of this film actually reveals itself to be open-ended and indecisive, which is of course centrally related to the fact that its characters do not envisage a similarly clear goal at the beginning as the young politician in Brussels. The narrative leaves open the criteria by which they were chosen to be observed in the first place. Many central questions – whether a couple will stay together, whether the young people have made the right life choices for themselves, whether their lives will change permanently  – remain unanswered. Only at the lowest level do causal links between events emerge here; often there is not even a measurable success at their end: It remains doubtful whether the Irish couple’s abstinence from heroin, motivated only by reason, will really last. Even in the case of the young Spaniard, whom the film follows through several attempts to find a job as a security guard until he finally succeeds in the end, the image of him finally guarding an unfinished shell of a building at night seems rather forlorn and sad, and it is only because his girlfriend failed to observe a registration deadline on the Internet that she is unable to apply to the Master’s program and subsequently leaves her country and her relationship. Unlike in the other film, then, causality here does not seem to satisfactorily mediate between events; it has no ordering power. Instead, by repeatedly superimposing or emphasizing radio reports on the financial crisis, or by having its characters listen to them, the film hints at a very central causality that appears to be mediated solely by the author. For hardly any of the conversations shown make direct reference to it: specifically, that the problems and unsatisfactory futures of these young people are a consequence of the then-current crisis. The private is a causal consequence of the political, or so the central assumption of this montage of Europe, she loves could be summarized. What the lives of these people explicitly do not bring, the film instead provides for them. Democracy, then, presents highly causally motivated characters and a corresponding plot, which, however, just like the film itself, depends on chance at a crucial point. Europe, she loves, on the other hand, takes on the small causalities of everyday life, which seem incongruous and are interspersed with chance, in order to fit them into a comprehensive argument in a bracketing movement of the film itself.

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4 The Unity of Diversity A framing, i.e. the selection of certain elements to form a unity that disposes of what belongs to it and what does not, also appears at the same time as a basic condition for the medium of film as well as for people’s religious faith. Thus the film must decide which characters of a plot it places in the centre of the scene at all and which must therefore remain in the background; it must furthermore decide which actions it considers essential for its plot and pass over the usually much more numerous unimportant ones; and finally the camera image also presupposes a decision at every moment as to what is (still) to be seen in the field of vision and what remains excluded. From at least these three processes of selection, the film forms a synthesis whose cohesion into a unity coded as meaningful corresponds in many respects to the proto-religious moment of group-community described earlier with Simmel. But how do the two films under investigation undertake such operations of unity? Democracy uses the traditional stylistic device of prolepsis – an anticipation of almost the end of the events described, in order to then explain with a “two years earlier” how this result came about in the first place. Both this prologue, as the beginning of the narrative time, and the earliest moment of the narrated time take the protagonist Jan Philipp Albrecht into focus. He is shown for most of the time at his workplace, the EU Parliament. If there are shots of an outside between individual scenes, these are mainly from the immediate surroundings, from the city of Brussels. The local and personal focus is thus largely dictated by the plot. The most striking operation of unity that this film demonstrates is that of a temporal selection. For in the one and a half hours that the film lasts, events are depicted that extend over several years. Only this selection makes it possible to understand the aforementioned close causality of the political events as such, to believe in the success of the project, precisely because the events beforehand had all been aimed at it, even at a time when its actual protagonist already seems to have resigned. At the same time, the necessity and ability of the film to select a unity are able to charge even the seemingly small things in life with a significance that places them in a larger context of meaning. For example, at the beginning of the plot, before the crucial presentation, when Jan Philipp Albrecht attempts to tie a necktie knot, realizing, “This will be the knot of my life.” And upon first failure, opens, “We’ll have to do that again!” – an anticipation in the small of what will constitute the plot in the large: Tying a complicated knot and not being discouraged by setbacks. Such a synthesis of the different moments into a closely linked unity is also able to make the seemingly insignificant, the tiresome appear as a reflection of a great whole. Finally, Europe, she loves also offers a counter-image in this question, because the duration of the events shown is hardly addressed. Viewers can only guess whether they are witnessing a mere week in the lives of these characters as spectators or a much longer period of time. Where the achievement of goals is not in the foreground, the chronology of the action, even the question of its actual chronology, remains only secondary. A sense of the personal unity of the plot also emerges only

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late: At no point does the film justify why it wants to accompany precisely these characters. The cut from one place to another is often abrupt; especially at the beginning, it is unclear who is to be portrayed here and according to what criteria the montage is proceeding. And so the central synthesis of this film consists of the assertion of a connection between these people and, above all, a spatial unity into which it seemingly places them. The second caption on the DVD cover already announces this (without punctuation): “Tallinn Seville Dublin Thessaloniki”. This film thus shows a montage of similar settings, each one presenting a young heterosexual couple struggling with their everyday problems, from four medium-sized cities of the EU, which roughly also designate four outer points of their spatial expansion. The unity that this film creates in its montage is thus also programmatically brought into line with the local and cultural unity of the political union. At first glance, however, the various figures are not working on a common project; on the contrary, the film shows them almost exclusively dealing with the most private of issues. But at second glance, it is precisely here that lines of connection can be drawn, patterns discerned that point to a larger whole. Thus, the young adults soon resemble each other in their confusion, their negotiation of fundamental questions. It is precisely in what separates the young couples from one another that unifying elements appear across national borders – in the role that drug use plays in their lives, in the question of the fundamentals of communication as partners, and finally in the fact that it is almost always the woman who emanates a conscious dissatisfaction and a drive for change. The unity that Democracy creates is thus based on the fact that it has made a very small selection from the infinite number of events over a period of more than two years; a selection that turns the complex project of finding a law into an action guided by causality and intention that the viewers can comprehend in a short time. Europe, she loves, on the other hand, seems to resist precisely this claim in its approach – and yet manages to tell of a community on the most personal level in seemingly unplanned leaps across the subcontinent.

5 Conclusion With regard to the three questions examined here, the two films differ in almost identical ways, and yet both begin by explaining their (common) difference from a media form that otherwise decisively shapes our image of the EU: Television news coverage. This is the case at the beginning of Democracy, when Viviane Reding drives up and appears before a panorama of assembled cameras. So too at the beginning of Europe, she loves, when the film camera still behind the TV cameras gives an image of the broadcasts of an official political ceremony, with the Greek protagonist in the scene earlier still ruminating: “Most people don’t really watch TV. They just let it run.” Most of what has been pointed out here distinguishes the two films quite significantly from political news reporting. From it, an audience usually demands a focus on “the essentials”, among which a connection between people and the world is not

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counted: A politician’s walk through the corridors of the EU Parliament is not considered newsworthy. The causality between the events also remains insular as a rule; it ends abruptly with each of the segments when there is a switch to the next most important news item. And so the external unity of political reporting is also limited above all to externals: to the personal constancy of the impersonally formulating presenters, to the external appearance of the programme and the recognisable specifications of its formats. In comparison, film, as a particular form of media, is better suited to take up the three elements that Georg Simmel and Gilles Deleuze have described as constituting faith even before any transcendent reference. So if the question is: “How can a contemporary faith be communicated to the European community of states?”, then the analysis of the chosen films makes it clear that contemporary documentary film is not about naïve and transparent influence in the sense of propaganda film. It is rather quite different from, and medially conscious of, the operations with which cinema reveals and constructs the connection between man and the world, the causality between events, and the unity of their multiplicity. For Deleuze explicitly does not write of a single film that makes believe, but asks about the medial whole, about the possible catholicity of cinema. In this sense, the two films discussed here are not in competition with each other; rather, they bring their differences to a congruence that stands more for a common project than for conflict. This becomes particularly clear whenever the two films seem to coincide: When in Europe, she loves the politicians’ statements suddenly move from the background noise to the foreground, the audience of the other film knows their work up close. And when, in Democracy, the sounds of the young ballplayers outside the boardroom grow louder and louder, the viewers of the other film have looked into some existential abysses of the young people whose protection and future are being negotiated here. At the same time as the question of “Are we okay?”, another discourse is being conducted that touches on this question: The discourse about the tasks of public broadcasting, which in Europe is probably the most important financier of such film projects as Democracy or Europe, she loves. Recently, there has been an increase in contributions arguing for limiting its tasks to pure information, to mere reporting. Unlike private media providers, however, a trust in public service broadcasting cannot be separated from a trust in politics, from a trust in political commonality. A public service broadcaster, whose self-image is based on the “public mandate”, should, if only for its own sake, continue to participate in the financing of this cinema beyond its focus on “mere information”, and should, not least, continue to cooperate here in promoting faith in this community at the respective level of contemporaneity.

References Bordwell, David: Narration in the Fiction Film. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press 1985. Deleuze, Gilles: Das Zeit-Bild. Kino 2. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 1997.

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Früchtl, Josef: Vertrauen in die Welt. Eine Philosophie des Films. München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag 2013. Große Hüttmann, Martin/Wehling, Hans-Georg (Hg.): Das Europalexikon. Bonn: Dietz 2013. Rosa, Hartmut: Resonanz. Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 2016. Simmel, Georg: Gesamtausgabe Bd. 10. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 1995. Willaime, Jean-Paul: Zivilreligion nach französischem Muster, in: Heinz Kleger, Alois Müller (Hg.): Religion des Bürgers. Zivilreligion in Amerika und Europa. München: Kaiser 1986, S. 147–174.

Europe at High Sea Sea Journey with Hans Pleschinski’s Novel Brabant (1995) Michael Braun

In his essay Lʼautre cap (1990), which appeared simultaneously in five languages in the literary magazine Liber, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, LʼIndice, El Pais, and Le Monde, Jacques Derrida searches for something that can outline the borders of Europe. His answer is quite surprising. With the ‘other Cape’ Derrida finds an image for an identity of Europe that spatially transcends the borders of the continent and pushes aside the curtain of Europe’s colonial past. This history is inextricably linked to the crossing of the oceans and the taking possession of the foreign; when Derrida’s essay appeared in book form in 1992, it commemorated the 500th anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of America. ‘Cape’ is a word from the language of navigation. It means ‘the pole, the end, the goal, the telos of a directed, calculated, willed, decided, made up, ordered movement’.1 ‘Cape’ is thus a concept of direction and movement. It has to do with the captain who charts the course of a ship; the captain is the head (caput) of the crew, he records the voyage segments (the chapters) in the log. It is interesting in our context that Derrida, following Paul Valéry’s Europa essays,2 understands the Mediterranean as the founder of “‘spirit, culture and commerce’“.3 Thus the sea, or more precisely the ship, becomes the medium, the means of transport of the European idea, for ideas have always been imported to Europe on ships and brought from there to the world, so that it is fair to say: It is on  Derrida, Jacques: Das andere Kap. Die vertagte Demokratie. Zwei Essays zu Europa. Translated from the French by Alexander García Düttmann. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1992, p. 15. 2  Cf. Valéry’s essays Die Krise des Geistes (1919), Europäischer Geist (1922) and Die Freiheit des Geistes (1939); on this Lützeler, Paul Michael: Die Schriftsteller und Europa. Von der Romantik bis zur Gegenwart. Munich: Piper Verlag 1992, p. 301 f. and p. 308. 3  Quoted in Derrida (1992, p. 48). 1

M. Braun (*) Faculty of Philosophy, Institute for German Language and Literature II, University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_11

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the seas that the “Europeanization of the idea of history” actually begins.4 In Derrida’s deconstructivist pictorial logic, the ship is the medium of Europe par excellence; at the same time, it mirrors poetic power by exposing the nautical core of our colloquial and technical idioms: “sailor’s yarn, narrative flow, stream of consciousness” attest to the “elective affinity of narration and navigation.”5 And the more one views Europe from a distance, that is, on a voyage by ship, on a voyage away or back, the better one can tell of Europe’s mediality, whereby one must reckon with the travel risks of storm, shipwreck and sinking. A positive test of this theory is Hans Pleschinski’s novel Brabant.6 The book was published in 1995, and it already has a ship’s name in its title. The “Brabant” is a – fictitious – Belgian hotel ship. It belongs to a “pan-European” (21) cultural association founded in 1932 with the fancy name ‘Artemis’. The three-master is anchored at the Grote Plein in Nieuwpoort. On 1 October 19947 the ‘Brabant’ sets sail. Her destination is Washington, D. C. Many club members are outraged because a second Disneyland is to be built in Rome. “Mickey Mouse at the ruins of Hadrian”: this “decisive battle of cultures” (597)8 in the midst of the civilization of the West is not at all acceptable, the president of the ‘Kulturbund’ decides and collects arguments for a European manifesto against the “Americanization of the world and the universe” (42). In the end, the ship arrives in the American capital after an adventurous six-week voyage. A warning shot is fired at the Pentagon with the old on-board cannon; at the same time, the opponents of the pan-European manifesto cause an explosion of the “Brabant”. Pleschinski tells of a tragicomic transport of ideas from the Old World to the New. This European and, in fact, transatlantic adventure story was so unusual in the

 According to Ernst Robert Curtius (Europäische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter, Bern. Munich: Francke Verlag 10th ed. 1984, p. 19), European literature springs from two sources, the ancient Mediterranean and the modern Western. 5  Klotz, Volker: Narrative. Von Homer zu Boccaccio, von Cervantes zu Faulkner. Munich: Verlag C. H. Beck 2006, p. 119. Cf. Hielscher, Martin: Der Roman als Schiff. Polyphonie und Emanzipation in Hans Pleschinski’s Brabant (1995), in: Laura Schütz and Kay Wolfinger (eds.): Eleganz und Eigensinn. Studien zum Werk von Hans Pleschinski. Würzburg: Verlag Königshausen & Neumann 2019 (= Film  – Medium  – Diskurs, ed. by Oliver Jahraus and Stefan Neuhaus, vol. 100), pp. 153–164. 6  Probably not coincidentally, a storm-tested Odysseus is also cited once (61). The following is quoted from the paperback edition: Pleschinski, Hans: Brabant. Novel at sea. Revised new edition. Munich: dtv 2004. The changes mainly concern chapter counting and chapter names; here, too, the author’s course has apparently been slightly corrected. 7  “Saturday, October 1” (7): the novel begins with this date and day. The year that fits the calendar – namely 1994 – is not mentioned anywhere, but it coincides with various real historical events that the novel recounts, such as the shelling of Sarajevo in the Bosnian War (58), the first free gubernatorial elections in Russia (251), and Nelson Mandela’s presidential inauguration in South Africa (550); the visit of the US preacher Billy Graham to Essen, however, is moved from 1993 to 1994, perhaps with the epic license of fiction. Pleschinski’s novel is not, after all, a history book. 8  The clash of civilizations is here shifted to an internal conflict of the Western cultural sphere; cf. Huntington, Samuel: Kampf der Kulturen. Die Neugestaltung der Weltpolitik im 21. Jahrhundert. Translated from the American by Holger Fliessbach. Berlin: Siedler Verlag 6th ed. 1998, p. 19. 4

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mid-1990s that it was almost lost in the stream of German-German novels, which also appeared in 1995 and became bestsellers that were widely acclaimed and even made into films.910 This is astonishing, for it was not as if the European theme had played no part in the debates about the new national and cultural identity that a reunified Germany was to have in a Europe that was growing together. It is important to note that the contemporary historical setting of the – invented – story told in the novel is highly real. The dates referred to mark turning points in the history of European integration. The founding year of the Kulturbund in the novel recalls the Europe essays of Stefan Zweig (Der europäische Gedanke) and of Hermann Broch (Zerfall der Werte) of 1932.11 The epic action in Pleschinski’s novel ends on 9. It also takes place in the early years of the European Union, which by virtue of the Maastricht Treaty of 199212 replaced the European Community and grew to 15 member states in 1995; Austria, Sweden, and Finland joined the EU on 1 January 1995. Europe was a popular topic in literary essay writing in the mid-1900s, from Grassʼ speech Mein Traum von Europa (My European Dream) (1992)13 to Peter Sloterdijk’s essay Falls Europa erwacht (If Europe awakes) (1994)14 to Thomas Hürlimann’s Leipzig speech Der Kosmopolit wohnt im Kosmos (The Cosmopolitan lives in the Cosmos) (1994). With changing figures of argumentation, the respective image of Europe is placed here in transatlantic or supra-European spaces: Grass praises the picaresque novel as a canonical model of world literature (Melville, Dos Passos), Sloterdijk celebrates the United States of America with its signs of triumph (the dome of St. Peter’s above the Capitol, the Roman fasces at the base of the Lincoln Memorial) as “epigones of the Romans”,15 Hürlimann opens up secularized European modernity into the cosmopolitan.16

 In addition to Günter Grassʼ Ein weites Feld, Thomas Brussig’s Helden wie wir, Thomas Hettche’s Nox, Christian Kracht’s Faserland, Erich Loest’s Nikolaikirche and Bernhard Schlink’s Der Vorleser were published. 10  Jakob Otten described Pleschinski’s novel in Focus (11.12.1995) as an “amusing satire of a novel”; the criticism of Ruth Klüger (Dampfnudel auf hoher See, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 15.09.1995) and the anonymous short review in Spiegel (01.01.1996) were similarly mixed. 11  The series of essays on the “decay of values” appeared in 1932 in the final volume of Broch’s Schlafwandler-Trilogie, Huguenau oder die Sachlichkeit), Stefan Zweig gave his lecture in Florence. Cf. Lützeler (1992, pp. 361–363). – 1932 was also a Goethe year (100th anniversary of his death), in which Goethe was celebrated as a great European. 12  Patel, Kiran Klaus: Projekt Europa. Eine kritische Geschichte. Munich: Verlag C.  H. Beck 2018, p. 342. 13  In: Grass, Günter: Werkausgabe, vol. 16. Essays und Reden III, edited by Daniela Hermes and Volker Neuhaus. Göttingen: Steidl Verlag 1997, pp. 340–351. 14  Sloterdijk, Peter: Falls Europa erwacht. Gedanken zum Programm einer Weltmacht am Ende des Zeitalters ihrer politischen Absence. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 1994. 15  Ibid., p. 39. 16  The “trap of the total level” can be escaped “neither by national nor by European means”, writes Thomas Hürlimann: Der Kosmopolit wohnt im Kosmos, in: Ders.: Das Holztheater. Geschichten und Gedanken am Ende. Zurich: Ammann Verlag 1994, pp. 9–25, here p. 20. 9

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Brabant, if read as the “European novel” it once claims itself to be (562), is a novel of ideas. Ideas are parts of the adventure of European society on its voyage across the Atlantic, and Pleschinski’s story is about this postcolonial European society itself, about its self-image, its identity, its set of values, and about the differentiation of the own from the foreign. Almost all discourses on Europe in modern times, which can basically be divided into institutionalist, political-federal and philosophical-­cultural variants,17 are taken up in the novel and negotiated in a way that is as controversial as it is pointed, sometimes even exaggerated. Kant’s peace writings come into the discussion (621), the Central European debate of the 1980s gets involved (202), Byzantinism (235), anti-fascism (253), ecocriticism (276  f., 535 f.), cosmopolitanism (568) are further positions.18 Europe, then, takes place as a conversation; indeed, one might say that Europe in the novel is a single conversation, a veritable tapestry of conversation that occupies large sections in almost every chapter and links a large number of characters together. An ideal place for such character-rich discourse is the ship; ‘discorso’, after all, means the sea route and the narrative course,19 and the ship novel is in this sense “direction, magic, salvation” (613). In this way, Pleschinski’s ensemble novel is able to play out a “model Europe” (254) of different countries, regions, cultures “from Porto to Vilnius” (42). On board are a Krakow ornithologist who writes diaries, a Geneva pianist who intones Handel, a Liege magazine dealer, a Utrecht pawnbroker, a Flensburg industrial designer, a Stuttgart dramaturge who offers fitness courses, a landscape architect from Dresden, a dentist couple from Winterthur who go overboard one night, a feature writer from Hanover, who writes poetry on the side and likes to argue with a satirist from Copenhagen about “whether satire or the works of suffering are more important” (544), a restorer from Karlsruhe, a documentary filmmaker from Pisa, a Flemish newspaper intern who is the temporary mistress of a Flemish night radio editor, who in turn engages in a bitter war of words about European values with the president of the association; then a French sculptress, a Luxembourgish crime writer with writer’s block, a geography teacher from Malmö, a Viennese nature lyricist, a sculptress from Lorraine, a catering director from Monaco, a Marburg antiquities scholar and his wife who are writing a “Testament to the Germans” (553–558), a Swedish industrial clerk, two Portuguese fashionistas, a Piedmontese industrialist’s wife, a Spanish numismatist who dies of seasickness, a Greek agronomist who, at over 80, is the doyen of the company, two homosexual couples from England and Germany, a photographer from Dublin, a Lithuanian weaving artist who speaks Latin (37), a Flemish restaurateur who is at the helm – and these are by no means all the characters with their “altogether 29 nationalities” (35); the ship, because it contains more states than the European Union would later have after its eastward  Cf. Lützeler, Paul Michael: Streit über Europas Zukunft (2014), in: Ders.: Publizistische Germanistik. Essays und Kritiken. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Verlag 2015, pp. 275–277. 18  “Europe is another name for the new global village,” says British patron Crawford (568). 19  Cf. Wolf, Burkhardt: Fortuna di mare. Literatur und Seefahrt. Zurich/Berlin: diaphanes Verlag 2013, p. 15. 17

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enlargement, vaults the EU, so to speak. Incidentally, there is no Brexit in the novel yet, but none of the Scottish members of the club will be on the ship. In what follows, I am concerned with the question of what the figure of speech ‘Europe’ has to do on the ship and what the European competition of ideas is doing there. I want to approach this from two perspectives: Europe on the ship, that is the question of a European substitute ship of state as the medium of a trans-European adventure of ideas. Europe as conversation, that is the question of the discursivity of the image of Europe.

1 Europe on the Ship The interesting thing about the ancient allegory of the ship of state is that industrialization and modernization have hardly done it any harm. Herder writes in the journal of my journey in 1769: The ship is the archetype of a very special and strict form of government. Since it is a small state that sees enemies all around it, sky, storm, wind, sea, stream, cliff, night, other ships, shore, it has a government that comes close to the despotism of the first hostile times. Here is a monarch and his first minister, the helmsman: everything behind him has its assigned posts and offices, the neglect and rebellion of which is so severely punished20

This ship-of-state trope is characterized, according to Burkhardt Wolf in his monumental study of literature and seafaring, by a “remarkable constancy and classicism”, but has then been reinterpreted in the course of the state-of-state sciences of the seventeenth century. State as well as ship are no longer ideas of a complex state, but experimental systems; construction becomes more important than theory.21 The “Brabant” in Pleschinski’s novel is also a ship of state, but one with unusual features. There is no government and no jurisdiction, but there is a daily schedule that regulates what must be done on board and below deck, and which, with the distribution of the various watchkeeping and washing, cooking and course tasks (152, 417), makes a thoroughly democratic impression on each passenger. The ship is the setting for an equally federally organised cultural programme, in which there is as much room for making music and reading aloud together as there is for language and sports courses (240). So people are on board to learn from each other. But the ship has no captain, instead there is the domineering but unstable president of the Kulturbund, Jeanne Toussaint. She graduated, like Sartre and Derrida before her, from the Lycée Louis-le-Grand, was “special representative of the 4th Republic for educational matters in French Indochina” (40), speaks five languages fluently, and exaggerates Thomas Mann’s motto of a “militant humanism”22 by demanding, “‘We  Herder, Johann Gottfried: Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769, ed. by Katharina Mommsen. Stuttgart: Reclam Verlag 2002, p. 19 f. 21  Wolf (2013, pp. 208–213). 22  Mann, Thomas: Achtung, Europa! (1936), in: Paul Michael Lützeler (ed.): Hoffnung Europa. Deutsche Essays von Novalis bis Enzensberger. Frankfurt a.M.: S.  Fischer Verlag 1994, 20

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attack!’“(41). There are neither sailors nor helmsmen; at the helm is a restaurateur and former “submarine staff sailor” (26), at his side the Danish satirist, who would rather see himself as a tragedian, a “Medusa of Medusa,” affirming misery rather than seeking happiness (60 f.). Moreover, there is a lack of equipment suitable for the high seas; right at the beginning we see two passengers carving a second lifeboat out of a table, while four others collide in front of the wheelhouse stairs in search of sea charts; of only limited use for orientation on the high seas are the “astrological knowledge of Liebgart Borowicz” (134), the nature lyricist from Austria. If anything prevails on this ship of state, it is “chaos, anarchy, panic” (17). From this, however, one can in turn learn all sorts of things about the European artistic state that the passengers conjure up there outside of Europe. The headless ship is a state outside the (European) states, on its way to the United States, whose role as a model for a model Europe is disputed; it is an exterritorial medium, a “compensatory heterotopia” in Foucault’s sense: The ship is “a rocking piece of space […], a place without a place, living out of itself, closed in on itself and at the same time at the mercy of the infinite of the sea”.23 This heterotopic model of the ship is presented in its own chapter right at the beginning (“Origin”). The “Brabant” is a medium of transformation and has, as it were, experienced Europe’s modernization processes on its own ship’s body: the “conversions of the warship into a school ship, of the school ship into an excursion ship, then the conversion of the Brabant into a hotel restaurant” (17) are also the conversions of imperialist-colonialist Europe into Enlightenment Europe and postmodernism. The “Brabant” becomes a Europe on the move: “The Occident stands up – it is moving! – and professes its own values” (42). But the ship is not only older than the company it houses; it was launched in 1869, with 1200 tons, 2500 square meters of sail, 62 meters in length, and three decks, two of them with cannons, one of which remains. It is also so old that its symbolic origins can be traced back to early modern times. The figurehead, the “sea goddess head” on the bow (26), bears witness to this. Just as the name of the cultural society pays homage to the goddess of the hunt and the moon (Artemis), the figurehead refers to the goddess at the helm, the Fortuna di mare, which has a nautical symbolism and also stands for the space of possibility and imagination in literature. But this “experimental space”24 would not be one if it were not for the adventures that are an inseparable part of the seafaring novel. The “Brabant” narrowly escapes an accident several times. In the English Channel, she almost collides with the container ship Cristóbal, and in the Bay of Biscay, she heads for a field of flared garbage. She is followed by customs helicopters and an Interpol ship. A 62-ton reefer pp.  315–327, here: p.  326. The speech was written in 1935 for a meeting of the Comité de Coopération Intellectuelle in Nice. 23  The ship is thus “the heterotopia par excellence”. Foucault, Michel: Andere Räume (1967). Translated from the French by Walter Seitter, in: Karlheinz Barck u. a. (eds.): Aisthesis. Wahrnehmung heute oder Perspektiven einer anderen Ästhetik. Essais. Leipzig: Reclam Verlag 1992, pp. 34–46, here: p. 46. 24  Cf. Wolf (2013, p. 19).

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ship hoists new provisions onto the frigate. People abandon ship (83), go overboard, one disappears temporarily. Test firing from the ship’s gun literally backfires, destroying a cabin (221 f.). A storm that lasts sixty hours wreaks havoc. In the storm chapter, the author’s love of narrative can run wild. It tells of the “heroic struggle” (447) of the elements with the ship, and certainly with recourse to narrative patterns of the classic and new sea adventure novels. The sailors brave the hurricane, but the unpredictable is still the element itself:25 “And the waters grew mighty, and the prow would come up out of the water. And it disappeared again into the sea of spray”. Thus the chapter heading pays homage to the “last sea storm in literary history” (429).26

2 Europe as a Conversation It has been said that the conversation about Europe is the real protagonist of the novel. The conversation dominates the characters, not the other way around; it controls the plot and determines the narrative, which is only rarely interrupted by scenic reports from a narrator standing cheerfully over it, and also demonstrates its polyphony through built-in songs, logbook entries, newspaper reports (290), Excel spreadsheets 42, 152, 417). Polyphonic are also the bonds that the characters form with each other. The Dutchman Corneliszoon and the Spaniard Pamplona, whose ancestors had waged war in the seventeenth century, are now playing chess. The Dutchman Corneliszoon and the Spaniard Pamplona, whose ancestors had waged war in the seventeenth century, now play chess against each other (57); the Prague Hradschin clerk Eva Kućerová becomes engaged in the Azores to the Norwegian industrial merchant Carl Becker (359); the Gdansk translator Czeslawa Syrkowa shares a double cabin with the Lithuanian weaving artist Bea Mikunas, both of whom understand each other’s language without any problems (303); perhaps, it is later said, “ARTEMIS could contribute to Baltic artists and craftsmen and intellectuals soon finding their way back to Europe” (409). In any case, linguistic alliances on a ship with 14 languages (255) are not exactly spared; the chairwoman plans an “Artemis dictionary for the primordial preservation of languages”, which translates the “jet set” into “flight fetishists” (44 f.); the Society’s “polyglot reflections” include finding national equivalents for the word “brunch”, “[v]irtually ‘grand déjeuner’ or ‘grand breakfast’“ (448), and as the “result of nearly two dozen consultations” a manifesto with the message “Europe and Love” comes out in seven languages, including Latin (635). Especially qualified as conversational figures are two persons, Cafours and Pamplona. They are the only figures to whom  – apart from “Zebaoth”  Cf. Klotz, Volker: Abenteuerromane. Eugène Sue, Alexandre Dumas, Gabriel Ferry, Sir John Retcliffe, Karl May, Jules Verne. Reinbek: Rowohlt Verlag 1989, pp. 25 and 212. 26  In the 119th chapter of Moby Dick, the modern classic of seafaring epic, typhoon and St. Elmo’s fire come together as doomsday scenarios; cf. Melville, Hermann: Moby-Dick oder Der Wal. German by Matthias Jendis. Munich: Carl Hanser Verlag 2001, pp. 765–773. 25

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(440–457)27 – a separate chapter of names is devoted: i.e. main characters. First, the writer on board, Raymond Cafours, at whose side (37) the Viennese natural lyricist Liebgart Borowicz does not have much to say; she does not even manage to set the fuse at the end. Cafours is the originator of the America trip. Having arrived in Nieuwpoort as the last conference guest of the Artemis Round, he has smuggled in the newspaper dʼLetzelburger Land with the news of the Roman Disney World Two project, which gets everything rolling. That this report from a provincial newspaper makes such high waves is funny enough; it seems even funnier that Cafours suffers from writer’s inhibitions and dreams of a “plot-saturated Luxembourg crime novel” that tells of the problems of the present: … when the new poverty spread in Europe, when after the implosion of the East the Russian Mafia united with the Italo-Mafia, when the monstrous dislocations of a new time were in the offing … which nobody should necessarily wish for! Then, in collapse and upheaval, one could tell again what collided, as also the Central European fates blazed anciently (267).

If Cafours, as the “only freelance artist” (264) on board, is something of an inhibited guardian of the Europe narrative, the Spanish numismatist Francisco Pamplona (35, 227–231) is the sick godfather of Europe, incurably seasick from the start and the first on board to die. Pleschinski did not skimp on clues to make Pamplona’s origins knowable. He “still mourns the Spanish legends a little”, we are told at one point (230), in his last monologue he dreams after the Spanish empire, the “fatherland of fatherlands” (211), and as the “funniest entertainer” (230) he resembles the knight of the sad figure so much that he deserves to be ennobled with his title in the corresponding chapter: “Don Francisco” (227). It is the epic wit, inventiveness, and proto-Romantic artistry “with and above art” that distinguish this Don Quixote in Thomas Mann’s sense.28 But Pamplona is a tragicomic Don Quixote figure who turns “grotesque … tragedy” (228). His image of Europe is paradoxically an American one; the last book he read was Alexis de Tocqueville’s On Democracy in America (1835), a travelogue by the later foreign minister of France on the democratic system in America (237 f.).

3 Summa Hans Pleschinski’s Brabant stages Europe as a conversation – on and in a medium that, like the titular ship, is moving away from Europe. “The Occident stands up – it sails! – and professes its own values” (42), we are told at the beginning. This Europe  The Walloon archivist Jeannette de Soyencourt also appears in the title of a chapter, but only in the table of contents (654); she is too weak and too much of a drama queen to be useful as a main character (cf. 23). 28  Thomas Mann read Cervantesʼ novel during his first Atlantic crossing in May 1934 and kept a travel diary; cf. Mann, Thomas: Meerfahrt mit Don Quichotte, in: Ders.: Gesammelte Werke, vol. IX. Reden und Aufsätze 1. Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer Verlag 1990, pp. 427–477, here: p. 444. Hans Pleschinski published a Thomas Mann novel, Königsallee, in 2013. 27

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talk functions as a “world wisdom multiplication machine” (275). It reflects the founding age of the European Union, when the Europe of the Maastricht Treaty “lacked the vision and energy for an undivided, free, and dynamic continent.”29 Just how uncertain society is about Europe’s identity is shown not only by the discourses on board, which diverge mightily, especially in the occasionally even hand-­wringing arguments between the president of the cultural association and her counterpart Huisters. Europe’s identity on the high seas is also made recognisable by the insignia by which a ship and its origins are identified: the flags. The ship has an external flag, once described from the outside perspective, “something crossed,” with “knife and fork” (13), resembling the yellow-black-green flag of Jamaica. In the lounge where the manifesto sessions are held, there is a hedgehoglike flag case. In it are the flags of the current EU states, the candidate countries and the non-EU members, but also the “Soviet flag” (104) and the “unresolved corner Europeanism” of “Turkey-­ Kurdistan” (471). By displaying flags in this way, the ship’s company demonstrates for a cultural identity of Europe that overarches its states: Europe in Pleschinski’s novel is multipolar, multicultural, and universalist in aspiration, a light version of Huntington’s global Clash of Cultures thesis, and Europe in the novel can also hardly be anything other than multipolar when told of in and by a multinational ensemble. The ship and the sea voyage as a model for this discourse on values and identity are inextricably linked to the narrative. If “seafaring […] is an art”, as Pleschinski has one of his protagonists say (177), then this is all the more true of narration on the high seas. Whether Europeans are “bad Americans” (599) or whether there is not “too much, rather than too little Europe” (568) are questions that extend out of the novel – for example in the documentary Where To Invade Next (2016). The film has the exact opposite route from Brabant, a different cape, as Derrida would have it. It tells of how documentary filmmaker Michael Moore travels to Europe on an American aircraft carrier to steal from European countries the good ideas that have been lost in the United States: A family-friendly labor policy in Italy, an open prison system in Norway, a nonviolent drug policy in Portugal, a school policy replacing homework with playtime in Finland, multi-course menus in French schools, gender policy in Iceland, memory culture in Germany, free tuition in Slovenian universities. What Moore’s film tells of with the cautionary gesture of a polemic and disguised as a European travelogue is also part of the ongoing debate about what holds Europe together in a world that is growing together and at the same time differentiating itself.30

 Spohr, Kristina: Wendezeit. Die Neuordnung der Welt nach 1989. Translated from the English by Helmut Dierlamm and Norbert Juraschitz. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 2019, p. 20. Cf. in the novel the Eurocentric plea of the Artemis chairwoman “for a free, independent Europe” (473). 30  Halden, Stephen: Review of Michael Mooreʼs “Where To Invade Next”, in: New  York Times (22.12.2015). Cf. also Diez, Georg: Europäisch für Anfänger, in: Der Spiegel (25.02.2016). 29

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References Derrida, Jacques: Das andere Kap. Die vertagte Demokratie. Zwei Essays zu Europa. Aus dem Französischen von Alexander García Düttmann. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1992, S. 15. Herder, Johann Gottfried: Journal meiner Reise im Jahr 1769, hg. von Katharina Mommsen. Stuttgart: Reclam Verlag 2002. Huntington, Samuel: Kampf der Kulturen. Die Neugestaltung der Weltpolitik im 21. Jahrhundert. Aus dem Amerikanischen von Holger Fliessbach. Berlin: Siedler Verlag 6. Aufl. 1998, S. 19. Hürlimann, Thomas: Das Holztheater. Geschichten und Gedanken am Ende. Zürich: Ammann Verlag 1994. Foucault, Michel: Andere Räume (1967). Aus dem Französischen von Walter Seitter, in: Karlheinz Barck u. a. (Hg.): Aisthesis. Wahrnehmung heute oder Perspektiven einer anderen Ästhetik. Essais. Leipzig: Reclam Verlag 1992. Klotz, Volker: Abenteuerromane. Eugène Sue, Alexandre Dumas, Gabriel Ferry, Sir John Retcliffe, Karl May, Jules Verne. Reinbek: Rowohlt Verlag 1989. Klotz, Volker: Erzählen. Von Homer zu Boccaccio, von Cervantes zu Faulkner. München: Verlag C. H. Beck 2006. Lützeler, Paul Michael: Die Schriftsteller und Europa. Von der Romantik bis zur Gegenwart. München: Piper Verlag 1992. Lützeler, Paul Michael (Hg.): Hoffnung Europa. Deutsche Essays von Novalis bis Enzensberger. Frankfurt a.M.: S. Fischer Verlag 1994. Lützeler, Paul Michael: Streit über Europas Zukunft (2014), in: Ders.: Publizistische Germanistik. Essays und Kritiken. Berlin/Boston: de Gruyter Verlag 2015, S. 275–277. Melville, Hermann: Moby-Dick oder Der Wal. Deutsch von Matthias Jendis. München: Carl Hanser Verlag 2001. Patel, Kiran Klaus: Projekt Europa. Eine kritische Geschichte. München: Verlag C. H. Beck 2018. Pleschinski, Hans: Brabant. Roman zur See. Revidierte Neuausgabe. München: dtv 2004. Sloterdijk, Peter: Falls Europa erwacht. Gedanken zum Programm einer Weltmacht am Ende des Zeitalters ihrer politischen Absence. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp Verlag 1994. Spohr, Kristina: Wendezeit. Die Neuordnung der Welt nach 1989. Aus dem Englischen vonHelmut Dierlamm und Norbert Juraschitz. Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt 2019, S. 20. Wolf, Burkhardt: Fortuna di mare. Literatur und Seefahrt. Zürich/Berlin: diaphanes Verlag 2013.

The Decline of Democracy in Alexander Schimmelbusch’s Novel Hochdeutschland Michaela Nicole Raß

We have seen that democracy is exposed to a double danger: on the one hand, the danger of too low a degree of intelligence in the representative body and the people controlling it; on the other hand, the danger of a class legislation of the numerical majority, as soon as it consists exclusively of members of a single class.1

John Stuart Mill raises these concerns at a time when democratic systems were in their nascent stages in Europe and were beginning to establish themselves as a stable form of government. That the democratic system remained a crisis-prone one is demonstrated, for example, by the election of dictators like Adolf Hitler. This susceptibility to crisis and the dangers Mills addressed inspired artists to develop dystopias. In 1861, Mills concluded that consideration should be given to “the extent to which democracy can be so organized that, without considerable impairment of the characteristic advantages of democratic governments, these two great grievances will be removed, or at least undergo every humanly possible correction.”2 Since the turn of the twenty-first century, alternative solutions have proliferated in the arts – and increasingly in realpolitik – but they would tend to have the potential to corrode democracy, making democratically elected representative bodies increasingly  Mill, John Stuart: Betrachtungen über die Repräsentativregierung, ed. by Hubertus Buchstein and Sandra Seubert. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2013, p. 141 (eBook). 2  Ibid., p. 141. 1

M. N. Raß (*) Institut für Deutsche Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_12

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authoritarian in character and undermining the moral constitution of democracy: Democracy would no longer be “a form of moral practice.”3 Since democracy is grounded in the moral and in normative claims to truth, and is not merely a “theory, institution and practice of collective self-determination”4 to be formally determined, a “democratic practice based exclusively on the pursuit of self-interest”5 destroys democracy. By contrast, such a practice – not necessarily moral – is at the core of neoliberal economics.6 The imagination of a threat to democracy by neoliberalism is explosive. Under the “conditions of individual preference optimisation [...] there is indeed a fundamental instability of collective decision-making procedures”,7 which – under ideal conditions – could lead to an erosion of democracy. Thus, a fundamental incompatibility of democracy and neoliberal economics can be established, because neither the principles and constitution nor the practice of democracy coincide with the profit-oriented and market-optimized principles of neoliberal economics, nor can the market be compared to a democracy, as suggested by ‘market populists’.8 And ‘that the market can have consequences incompatible with democracy should not be disputed’.9 Nevertheless, even after the economic crisis of 2007/2008, a revaluation of neoliberal principles,10 first and foremost the principle of profit optimisation and the related one of performance enhancement, can be observed in politics and a dominance of economics: From being one social domain among many (politics, culture, sociality, the state, etc.) the Economy now commands the stage, such that those other domains now appear subordinate or even subservient to the Economy and its needs.11

Imagined in art, the influence of economics cannot be underestimated in reality either, as economist John Clarke already notes: The dominance of the Economy [...] has transformed social, political and cultural domains, subjecting them to the rule of the market, either in the direct form of ‘market forces’, or  Nida-Rümelin, Julian: Was ist Demokratie, in: Ulrike Davy, Manuele Lenzen (eds.): Demokratie morgen. Überlegungen aus Wissenschaft und Politik. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2013, pp. 17–34, here: p. 26 (eBook). 4  Ibid., p. 24. 5  Ibid., p. 25. 6  Cf. e.g. Frevert, Ute: Kapitalismus, Märkte und Moral, Salzburg: Residenz Verlag 2019 or Harvey, David: A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005. 7  Nida-Rümelin (2013, p. 30). 8  Cf. e.g. Frank, Thomas: One Market Under God. Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy. New York: Anchor Books 2001. 9  Nida-Rümelin (2013, p. 31). 10  Cf. e.g. Crouch, Colin: Das befremdliche Überleben des Neoliberalismus. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 2011. 11  Clarke, John: Why Imagined Economies?, in: Jessica Fischer, Gesa Stedman (eds.): Imagined Economies – Real Fictions. New Perspectives on Economic Thinking in Great Britain. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2020, pp. 17–34, here: p. 17 f. (eBook). 3

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through the creation of quasi-markets (forms of regulation that aim to mimic the dynamics of ‘real’ markets via mechanisms of competition and contracting [...]).12

In his novel Hochdeutschland, Alexander Schimmelbusch shows how far the power of the economy can reach when it unfolds its democracy-destroying potential, and that it can lead to the establishment of autocratic ruling politicians.13 The main character Victor is an ideal opportunist and has a, as Schimmelbusch puts it, “flexible personality”.14 The first-person narrator’s rise in his professional life and his economic success are outlined in flashbacks. The preliminary climax is the position of power he holds as one of the directors of Birken Bank. As such he also cements traditional power relations and modes of behaviour of neoliberal economic activity in his company. Victor reinforces the mechanisms of Birken Bank’s hierarchical power system, typical for neoliberal business enterprises. He enjoys the economic as an emotional gain in the form of his exercise of power. Victor’s condescending behavior towards his employees and other service providers makes it obvious that the system of domination established in the bank is not based on mutual respect and the consensus to recognize qualities like equality and human dignity, practical reason, autonomy and individual capacity – beyond the economic performance the other provides – but reduces the human being to his function as a recipient of orders who has to cooperate exclusively in his role as a wage earner. Schimmelbusch describes the ways in which Victor can profit from the deregulation of national capital markets in the wake of the political reforms he initiated, globalization, and the reification of labor. Schimmelbusch provides insight into Victor’s thinking, which is geared towards optimizing profits in both his private and professional life. Victor is contemptuous of humanity and democracy. Schimmelbusch clarifies that professional success influences one’s thoughts and ways to judge one’s actions. Victor provides a tangible example to illustrate how one’s promotion changes his thought structures. The descriptions of Victor’s behaviour towards his partners and subordinates and the reflection on the state and rules of the neoliberal economy and the bank can be deciphered as descriptions of an economic system and the problematic relationship between banking and democracy. Schimmelbusch hereby casts a glance at a complex problematic that affects all banks, including the World Bank, because the World Bank promotes democracy, but largely in ways serving development in economic terms. On one hand, democratisation and decentralisation are presented as positive processes, and the Bank frequently stresses the need for the state to be responsive to citizens. [...] On the other hand, the Bank’s concern with participation actually seems to stem more from concern with the eventual success of state reform than with this being a fundamental citizen’s right. [...] More than democracy, the Bank is concerned with the state’s

 Ibid., p. 18.  Cf. Schimmelbusch, Alexander: Hochdeutschland. Stuttgart: J.  G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung 2018 (eBook). 14  Ibid., p. 7. 12 13

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­effectiveness.15 This explains the Bank’s ambiguous position on democracy: citizen participation is welcomed as a tool to archive a more effective state and subsequently more groth – not as a right in itself.16

According to the neo-liberal principles of economic growth and ever-increasing performance, democracy is supported by neo-liberal economics and banking as long as it fulfils its function for the benefit of the economy and serves the purpose of profit optimisation. Accordingly, Victor the banker does not reject democracy in principle, but inadvertently brings about its decomposition by setting out to run the state like a business enterprise, the so-called Deutschland AG.17 Viktor’s vision is one that some politicians seem to share today, namely to dismantle the EU as a structure of interwoven social and welfare states and to run the nation-state like a globally operating corporation that strives to order the world to its advantage as a dominant organizational power. Schimmelbusch illustrates the danger to democracy posed by the attitude of voters who think: “Parliament can go, let the aristocracy and the banks sort it out”.18 He shows that the orientation of the state and the orientation of politics towards neoliberalism leads to such a strengthening of the economy that it undermines state power. Thus, with the “de-democratising trends”19 of neoliberalism, the author addresses a development that economists also observe: “While financial and economic liberalisation has contributed to an overall loss of state power, in the process some institutions have gained influence, particularly national banks and ministries of finance.”20 Victor, too, as a politician as well as one of the shareholders of Birken Bank, profits from the destabilization of democracy. Schimmelbusch also uses his main character to illustrate the dangers of disenchantment with politics, disinterest and disinterested boredom, for Viktor initially has no political ambitions whatsoever, but drafts a political manifesto out of boredom. He is not a politician who aspires to rule as an autocrat and thus corresponds to a certain type: Some elected demagogues have a plan for the path to autocracy even before they take office. But many [...] do not have such a plan. The collapse of democracy does not necessarily require an elaborate plan. Rather, it can [...] also be the result of a series of unforeseen

  Demmers, Joelle/Fernández, Alex E./Hogenboom, Jilberto/Hogenboom, Barbara: Good Governance and democracy in a world of neoliberal regimes, in: Dies. (eds.), Governance in the Era of Global Neoliberalism. Conflict and depolitisation in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. London/New York 2017: Routledge, pp. 38–159, here: p. 63 ff. (eBook). 16  Ibid., p. 67. 17  Schimmelbusch (2018, p. 123 ff). 18  Brunkhorst, Hauke: Demokratie in der europäischen Krise, in: Ulrike Davy, Manuela Lenzen (eds.): Demokratie morgen. Überlegungen aus Wissenschaft und Politik. Bielefeld 2018: transcript Verlag, pp. 51–70, here: p. 55 (eBook). 19  Demmers/Fernández/Hogenboom (2017, p. 133). 20  Ibid., p. 71. 15

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events  – such as an escalating exchange of blows between a demagogic, norm-breaking leader and a threatened political establishment.21

Victor starts his political career both unwillingly and unwittingly when he writes a speech in which – by using terms that are as well suggestive as they are nebulous – a ‘homeland’ is evoked that is in permanent exchange with international markets. In his novel, Schimmelbusch combines two problematic areas that many artists are currently working on – for a given reason due to daily political events such as the restructuring of the EU and Brexit22 – namely, on the one hand, the spread of fascist and nationalist – if not national socialist – ideas and, on the other, the proximity of politics and business. Here a basic concept becomes tangible, which is varied throughout the novel: The contrast between a spatial locatability and a form of globalization, which is repeatedly restricted to global markets. The novel Hochdeutschland is characterised by the complete absence of any notion of Europe beyond a European market and an absence of the idea of a European identity or a European culture or multiple European cultures which are interlinked. Even the EU as an economic area has no meaning whatsoever in contrast to the global market. The author ignores the EU as a transnational entity that intervenes in the global economy as well as in the economy of the nation states. The EU has no influence on the world market as a factor that promotes competition – even though he describes technological progress,23 the EU’s turn towards a “‛knowledge economy’ or even an ‘information society’”.24 Victor sees Europe only as a limited international market in which commercial enterprises compete. In his manifesto, Victor describes a fantasy of a homeland as a regional market and, in a broader sense, as a national market, the fantasy of a rigorous meritocracy that is supposed to guarantee the competitiveness of a national economy on the global market:25 The restructuring of the nation-state and it’s transformation into an economic enterprise.26 Since economic enterprises are hierarchical and are most efficiently run by a small group of experts, it stands to reason that the economic enterprise of the nation-state would also be governed by a small group of politicians. The broad base formed by governing and opposition parties, commonly regarded as a prerequisite for a liberal democracy, is replaced in Schimmelbusch’s novel by a couple of autocrats, the business tycoon Victor and his friend, the former member of the political party Die Grünen Ali Osman. The politicians’ d­ isenchantment

 Levitsky, Steven/Ziblatt, Daniel: Wie Demokratien sterben. Und was wir dagegen tun können. Munich: Deutsche Verlags Anstalt 2018, p. 74 (eBook). 22  Cf. e.g. Annas, Max: Finsterwalde. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag 2018 (eBook) or Leroy, Jèrôme: Le Bloc. Paris: Éditions Gallimard 2011, to name just two writers. 23  Schimmelbusch (2018, 138 et seq). 24  Moisio, Sami: Geopolitics of the Knowledge-based Economy. London/New York: Routledge 2018, p. 488 (eBook). 25  Cf. Schimmelbusch (2018, p. 111). 26  Ibid., p. 123 ff. 21

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with democracy is also explained by their orientation towards the economy and the demands of autocratic politicians alike. The orientation to optimizing performance and minimizing effort holds another “reason for their increasingly authoritarian attitude: democracy makes work.”27 While family businesses and armies can be run with orders, democracy requires negotiation, compromise, and concession. Setbacks are inevitable, victories always fragmentary. [...] Every politician is frustrated by such constraints, but if he is a democrat he knows he must accept them. And he is able to endure the constant barrage of criticism. But for outsiders, especially those with a demagogic bent, the frustrations of democratic politics are often unacceptable. They find the system of checks and balances and separation of powers a straitjacket.28

Ali Osman, Victor’s childhood friend, is described as such a politician – and a charismatic one at that – who plans a ‘shadow cabinet’ with Victor, but initially upholds the democratic rules of respect for political opponents and restraint in official appearances, and is therefore also promoted by top politicians from other parties.29 Thus, Osman first demonstrates that he also knows the unwritten rules and laws of democracy and wants to uphold this political system, because respectful interaction, especially of political opponents with each other, is a prerequisite for democratic processes: ‘If the norm of mutual respect is weak, democracy is difficult to preserve’.30 At first the Green politician also seems to uphold the second norm, although he is already secretly working on dismantling it and striving to exploit institutional prerogatives without limits:31 A second norm, crucial to the survival of democracies, is what we call institutional restraint. To be restrained is to be patient, self-controlled, forbearing, and tolerant. In our context, institutional restraint can be thought of as refraining from actions that would satisfy the letter of the law but obviously violate its spirit.32

The reason for the cluelessness of the politicians and citizens not initiated by Ali Osman and Victor into their plans and visions is that from the respectful appearance of the member of Die Grünen and his behaviour towards other politicians, i.e. from his demonstrative conformity to one norm, the recognition of the other norm is inferred. This is due to the relationship between the norms: Mutual respect and institutional restraint are closely linked, and sometimes they even reinforce each other. Politicians are more inclined to exercise restraint when they accept others as legitimate rivals, and politicians who do not view their rivals as enemies of the state are generally less tempted to resort to norm-breaking to keep them out of power.33  Levitsky, Ziblatt (2018, p. 75).  Ibid., p. 75 f. 29  Cf. Schimmelbusch (2018, p. 130 ff). 30  Levitsky, Ziblatt (2018, p. 101). 31  Ibid., p. 106. 32  Ibid., p. 103. 33  Ibid., p. 108. 27 28

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Ali Osman, together with Victor, sets out after his election to dismantle democracy by its own means through a restructuring and reshuffling of the institutions that are supposed to protect democracy and guarantee the running of democratic processes. Although the ‘Osman government’ is characterized by a long reign and autocratic politicians who manipulate the mood with ‘extremist noise’,34 they are re-elected, the democratic electoral system remains formally intact.35 Schimmelbusch’s novel demonstrates a paradox that can also be observed in realpolitik, for the “tragic paradox of the slide into authoritarianism via elections is that the killers of democracy use its own institutions to kill it – gradually, almost imperceptibly, and legally.”36 The writer shows, how Victor and Ali Osman become notorious for targeting, outwitting and outmaneuvering political opponents by constructing a electoral program that appeals to different groups of voters.37 However, Schimmelbusch does not describe in detail how the “erosion of democracy [...] takes place in [...] tiny steps”,38 for example, by a synchronisation of nominally independent authorities such as the public prosecutor’s office, the courts like the Court of Audit, the Constitutional Court,39 an obstruction or ousting of opposition politicians and other political opponents in positions of power through lawsuits or slander.40 Nor does he take a look at the exploitation of emergency laws in the face of crises or acts of terrorism,41 or at the consequences of revising or reinterpreting the constitution.42 In contrast, Schimmelbusch addresses how Ali Osman and his shadow cabinet achieve a polarization of the electorate, which in turn has the potential to destroy democracy:43 Polarization can destroy democratic norms. When socioeconomic, ethical, or religious differences become extremely partisan, so that society splits into political camps whose worldviews are not only different but mutually exclusive, tolerance and respect are hard to sustain. Some polarizations are healthy and even necessary for democracy. Indeed, the history of Western European democracies teaches us that norms can endure even when parties are divided by significant ideological differences. But when a society is so deeply divided that the parties hold absolutely irreconcilable worldviews, and especially when its members  Cf. Schimmelbusch (2018, p. 141).  Cf. Ibid., p. 138. 36  Levitsky/Ziblatt (2018, p. 16). 37  Cf. Schimmelbusch (2018, p. 144). 38  Levitsky/Ziblatt (2018, p. 76). 39  Cf. Ibid., p. 77 ff. 40  Cf. Ibid., p. 80 ff. 41  Cf. Ibid., p. 91 ff. 42  Cf. Ibid., p. 86 ff. 43  This is also a danger of polarisation, which was sparked in the run-up to the Brexit referendum and is also linked to a social as well as political division in society. The ideological divide between political camps is democracy-threatening when it is linked to worldview, social standing, identity and membership of a group, and the other party’s electoral victory is perceived as an existential threat. “Recently, Western democracies have been rocked by internal crises of confidence. With a weak economy, widespread skepticism about the European Union, and the rise of anti-immigrant parties, Western Europe is definitely a cause for concern.” (Levitsky/Ziblatt 2018, p. 195). 34 35

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are also so socially divided that they have little contact with each other, normal rivalry between parties is replaced by a perceived threat from the other side. As mutual respect fades, politicians are tempted to abandon restraint and fight tooth and nail for their own victory. This can lead to the emergence of anti-system groups that reject democratic rules altogether. When this happens, democracy is in serious trouble.44

In his novel, Schimmelbusch demonstrates the consequences of a loss of trust in democratic values and norms and of the focus on economic success. He characterizes liberal democracy as a system prone to crisis and describes the appeal of authoritarian alternatives. Especially in the last chapter of the novel, the author describes exclusionary nationalism as an economic mechanism, pluralism as excessive economic competition, business tycoons as alternatives to democratic politicians. Using figures like Ali Osman to describe politicians, he illustrates how dwindling respect for democratic norms seems to become a necessity, because it strengthens the assertiveness of Deutschland AG and its authoritarian leaders in the global marketplace. The transformation of the democracy of a nation-state into the business enterprise ‘Deutschland AG’ and the ‘German Investment Authority’45 seems to require the abolition of liberal democracy and its regulatory mechanisms, because like democracy, economic knowledge also harbours a claim to truth: “In it, the concept of the market is both a model and a truth programme, and is thus linked to the call to make market laws themselves true”.46 This truth program is also significant for neoliberalism, and the writer illustrates – sometimes only suggestively – how the economic program begins to supplant the political program. The beginning is the idea of a shadow government, which in turn has a truth agenda.47 Through the dialogues of Victor and his childhood friend Ali, Schimmelbusch traces the emergence of a network of informal power48 of autocrats democratically elected and rising in the party system of democracy. In doing so, he points to the problem of a “reduction of politics to technology [of maintaining power] by circumventing, eliminating, and manipulating the public battle of opinion and the formation of public will”.49 Victor and Ali design an economic constitution in which economics, the judiciary and the executive are interwoven, thereby making national constitutional law conform to the economic laws of the market. In this way, the concept of homo economicus would replace that of the bourgeois and citoyen. Schimmelbusch thus enhances the proximity of politics and economics that already exists today and imagines how inseparably “neoliberal world economy and legal-political structure

 Ibid., p. 112 f.  Cf. Schimmelbusch (2018, p. 81 and p. 143). 46  Vogl, Joseph: Das Gespenst des Kapitals. Zurich: Diaphanes 2010, p. 55. 47  Cf. e.g. Fach, Wolfgang: Regieren: Die Geschichte einer Zumutung. transcript Verlag 2016, p. 142 ff. (eBook). 48  Cf. Möllers, Christoph: Gewaltengliederung. Legitimation und Dogmatik im nationalen und internationalen Rechtsvergleich. Heidelberg: Mohr Siebeck 2003. 49  Brunkhorst (2018, p. 54). 44 45

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formation can intertwine”50 if the state does not set limits to the economy. By tracing not a post-national constellation of the world economy, but the emergence of a national market-liberal regime, Schimmelbusch illustrates that “the world economic regime can massively intervene in the architecture of nation-states”:51 “Consequently, it brings about a massive transformation of political governance in nation-state democracies”.52 In summary, Alexander Schimmelbusch’s novel juxtaposes regionalism as a recurring detailed description of habitats with globalization, the manifestations and effects of which are illustrated by a look at the economic milieu. Regionalism and globalization form the two extremes between which the arc of tension extends. This arc of tension exists in the narrative of the transformation of national politics, the erosion of democracy, and the rise of two autocrats who, out of boredom and oversaturation, create a system of power that lasts over twelve years. By describing the democracy-destroying effect that a rise to power of neoliberalism and the influence of the economy on politics could have, Schimmelbusch makes clear that economy and politics relate to each other on many levels and the parameters for business relations and the connections between business and politics must always be redefined. Schimmelbusch asks the nowadays topical question – if one considers the changes within the EU, the developments in Great Britain and America – “to what extent the national welfare state is still able to counteract with its instruments in the face of the internationally organised and acting economy and in the face of [...] globalisation”.53 Schimmelbusch also points to another aspect that is problematic in terms of constitutional law, namely the tendency of neoliberal economics to reify the citizen and to make the market principle absolute. Not only artists, but also political scientists, sociologists, and constitutional lawyers urge, as I have outlined in this essay, to set limits to neoliberalism and the economy in general, instead of allowing an intertwining of economics with politics to that extent that makes politics and economy indistinguishable, as Schimmelbusch describes in his novel Hochdeutschland: The market principle also requires, beyond competition and competition regulations, a legal framework that integrates and limits the play of market forces, namely to ensure that the people remain the subject of economic activity and that the market principle does not take on a life of its own as a universal normative principle.54

  Möller, Kolja: Formwandel der Verfassung. Die postdemokratische Verfasstheit des Transnationalen. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2015, p. 43 (eBook). 51  Ibid., p. 43. 52  Ibid., p. 43. 53  Wieland, Joachim/Engel, Christoph/Dauwitz, Thomas von: Aussprache und Schlussworte, in: Dies. (eds.): Arbeitsmarkt und Staatliche Lenkung. Berichte und Diskussionen auf der Tagung der Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtler in Heidelberg vom 6. bis 9. Oktober 1999. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter 2000, pp. 143–198, here: p. 143 (eBook). 54  Ernst-Wolfgang Böckenförde in the discussion, see Wieland/Engel/von Dauwitz (2000, p. 149 f). 50

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References Annas, Max: Finsterwalde. Reinbek bei Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag 2018 (eBook). Brunkhorst, Hauke: Demokratie in der europäischen Krise, in: Ulrike Davy, Manuela Lenzen (Hg.): Demokratie morgen. Überlegungen aus Wissenschaft und Politik. Bielefeld 2018: transcript Verlag, S. 51–70 (eBook). Clarke, John: Why Imagined Economies?, in: Jessica Fischer, Gesa Stedman (Hg.): Imagined Economies  – Real Fictions. New Perspectives on Economic Thinking in Great Britain. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2020, S. 17–34 (eBook). Crouch, Colin: Das befremdliche Überleben des Neoliberalismus. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 2011. Demmers, Joelle/Fernández, Alex E./Hogenboom, Jilberto/Hogenboom, Barbara: Good Governance and democracy in a world of neoliberal regimes, in: Dies. (Hg.), Governance in the Era of Global Neoliberalism. Conflict and depolitisation in Latin America, Eastern Europe, Asia and Africa. London/New York 2017: Routledge, S. 38–159 (eBook). Fach, Wolfgang: Regieren: Die Geschichte einer Zumutung. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2016 (eBook). Frank, Thomas: One Market Under God. Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism and the End of Economic Democracy. New York: Anchor Books 2001. Frevert, Ute: Kapitalismus, Märkte und Moral, Salzburg: Residenz Verlag 2019 oder Harvey, David: A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2005. Leroy, Jèrôme: Le Bloc. Paris: Éditions Gallimard 2011. Levitsky, Steven/Ziblatt, Daniel: Wie Demokratien sterben. Und was wir dagegen tun können. München: Deutsche Verlags Anstalt 2018 (eBook). Mill, John Stuart: Betrachtungen über die Repräsentativregierung, hg. von Hubertus Buchstein und Sandra Seubert. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2013 (eBook). Möller, Kolja: Formwandel der Verfassung. Die postdemokratische Verfasstheit des Transnationalen. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2015 (eBook). Möllers, Christoph: Gewaltengliederung. Legitimation und Dogmatik im nationalen und internationalen Rechtsvergleich. Heidelberg: Mohr Siebeck 2003. Moisio, Sami: Geopolitics of the Knowledge-based Economy. London/New York: Routledge 2018 (eBook). Nida-Rümelin, Julian: Was ist Demokratie, in: Ulrike Davy, Manuele Lenzen (Hg.): Demokratie morgen. Überlegungen aus Wissenschaft und Politik. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2013, S. 17–34 (eBook). Schimmelbusch, Alexander: Hochdeutschland. Stuttgart: J.  G. Cotta’sche Buchhandlung 2018 (eBook). Wieland, Joachim/Engel, Christoph/Dauwitz, Thomas von: Aussprache und Schlussworte, in: Dies. (Hg.): Arbeitsmarkt und Staatliche Lenkung. Berichte und Diskussionen auf der Tagung der Vereinigung der Deutschen Staatsrechtler in Heidelberg vom 6. bis 9. Oktober 1999. Berlin/ New York: Walter de Gruyter 2000, S. 143–198 (eBook). Vogl, Joseph: Das Gespenst des Kapitals. Zürich: Diaphanes 2010.

Crisis or Upheaval? Reflections on Brexit in Literature and Film: An Overview Michaela Nicole Raß

I do not think Europe and England are going to work. If you call a taxi driver’s attention to a hellish detour he’s taking, he mumbles something hostile about Germany. And the waiter, whom you ask politely if the chicken soup is really not made of beef, immediately talks about a conspiracy against England. Presumably they think Europe is nothing but a haven for foot-and-mouth disease, and would rather be alone after all. Hugs, Jurek.1

On 15.12.1996, on a card to his son Lonni Becker from London, the German writer Jurek Becker noted an estrangement between Europe and Great Britain, namely between Europe and England, and thus between himself, the European, and ‘them’, the ‘silent citizens’ of London from the ‘popular milieu’. Becker notices, that they seem to be hostile to Europe and Europeans and would prefer splendid isolation. In this way, Becker addresses a number of motifs that are repeatedly thematised both in the political debates surrounding Brexit and in “BrexLit”2 and films and series, that are closely related to the political Brexit-process. This essay will use short analyses of exemplary works to show how differently Brexit is contextualised in literature and film and which problems are thereby brought into view. Post-Brexit dystopias will not be analysed, as they do not shed light on the crisis phenomenon Brexit itself, but rather imagine its possible consequences and forms of reshaping Britain and Europe. Due to its aesthetic possibilities and popularity, the medium of film today explains the ways of the world and concepts like identity in the same way as literature does: “Literature has  Becker, Jurek: “Am Strand von Bochum ist allerhand los”. Postcards, ed. by Christine Becker. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2018, p. 778 (eBook). 2  Cf. e.g. Shaw, Kristian: BrexLit, in: Robert Eaglestone (ed.): Brexit and Literature. Critical and Cultural Responses. London/New York: Routledge 2018, pp. 15–30 (eBook). 1

M. N. Raß (*) Institut für Deutsche Philologie, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Munich, Germany © Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2022 M. N. Raß, K. Wolfinger (eds.), Europe in Upheaval, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-476-05883-6_13

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always been a significant influence on the perception of Britishness (or a narrower Englishness), shaping the identifiers of national identity in the popular cultural imagination”.3

1 Brexit: Another Crisis of Society In many novels and stories, in which socio-cultural dynamics are described, dystopias are sketched out. Brexit is interpreted as a sign of a social crisis, which occurs as a direct consequence of previous economic crises, which trigger changes in social structures.4 It is significant, that two approaches are used in the scientific papers to analyse attitudes towards Europe. In BrexLit, these are combined and presented interdependently: The first [approach] tends to favour an explanation by sociological variables that link social positions, characteristics and careers to basic attitudes [to Europe], without including the national statement context as a central variable. The second considers the national context as crucial for explaining, classifying and comparing these basic attitudes.5

The close intertwining of the two approaches in BrexLit also results in discussing the issue of whether and under which circumstances a “compatibility or incompatibility of European, national or regional identities”6 could be established. The two approaches are addressed in conjunction with this question by means of the presentation of exemplary individual fates, outlining a ‘social history’ of the figures.7 This approach is significant for the novel Autumn, for example. Ali Smith’s novel, the first part of a quartet of seasons, paints a picture of mood through the portrayal of characters of different ages and from different milieus, which allows conclusions to be drawn about political tendencies and conflicts that are shaping Great Britain immediately after the Brexit referendum. The focus is on the relatively young academic Elisabeth Demand, who is cosmopolitan and internationally connected because of her work environment, and Daniel Gluck, a former refugee from the Nazis, whose identity is linked to the history of Europe and Great Britain. He is an older neighbour from Elisabeth’s childhood environment, who is now fully integrated and thereby also developed a national British identity. Flashbacks to the  Ibid., p. 18.  See also Koller, Veronika/Kopf, Susanne/Miglbauer, Marlene (eds.): Discourses of Brexit. London/New York: Routledge 2019. 5  Dakowska, Dorota/Rowell, Jay: Gibt es einen nationalen Effekt? Zeitlichkeit und historische Erfahrungen bei den Grundeinstellungen zu Europa, in: Daniel Gaxie, Nicolas Hubé, Marine de Lasalle, Jay Rowell (eds.): Das Europa der Europäer. Über die Wahrnehmung eines politischen Raums, transl. by Franz Weigand and Markus Merz. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2011, pp. 137–158, here: P. 137 (eBook). 6  Ibid., p. 138. 7  Zum Verhältnis zu kulturgeschichtlichen Darstellungstraditionen in Großbritannien, cf. Jordanova, Ludmilla: The Practice of Cultural History in Britain, in: Jörg Rogge (ed.): Cultural History in Europe. Institutions – Themes – Perspectives. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2011, pp. 63–78 (eBook). 3 4

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adolescent years of both characters establish a contrasting relation of different time levels and allow us to draw conclusions about the fluidity of their national identity. Different historical experiences can be related to each other through this narrative method. In this way, a multifaceted history is sketched. However, it is the recourses to the crisis periods of the 1930s, 1940s and 1960s that put the political, economic and social consequences of the Brexit into perspective. The consequences of Brexit are not yet reflected in their extent, because the characters primarily deal with the referendum and the society that appears in a new light after the decision for a Brexit, since it has become obvious, how different the world view of parts of the population is. The Brexit is described as one crisis among many, as another form of a recurring phenomenon: “Here’s an old story so new that it’s still in the middle of happening, writing itself right now with no knowledge of where or how it’ll end”.8 The focus on Brexit as a social crisis and the simultaneous relativisation are reinforced by the literary-historical references. There are implicit as well as explicit references to canonised writers such as Charles Dickens, Thomas Hardy or William Shakespeare, who in turn have thematised societies and social organisations in crisis. At the same time, intertextuality is explained by the text itself, as it describes Elizabeth’s visits to Daniel, during which she reads to him, and the development of a story, on which Elizabeth and Daniel work together. Narrative in all its forms is said to have the capacity to create world and shape reality. The power of the author to create reality – which can be applied equally to Smith, the narrative characters and those involved in the Brexit discussions  – is also addressed, for example by Gluck’s concern that ‘whoever makes up the story makes up the world’.9 This idea of the novel casts a light on historiography: Even behind largely abstract concepts such as ‘nation’ and terms referring to territories such as ‘England’, phantasmagorias and notions are concealed.10 In addition to the levels of the narration of personal memories on one hand and literature – also interpreted as a reservoir of interpersonal memories – on the other, the question of the relationship to and appreciation of the past is raised by repeatedly describing the handling of antiquities, a motif that is linked to the figure of Elisabeth Demand’s mother, herself an art historian and thus skilled in dealing with artefacts of past eras. Through the description of the participants in the TV show The Golden Gravel, different ways of dealing with materially existing witnesses of past times are outlined. Elizabeth’s mother eventually takes them to task for rebelling against matters, such as the building of a fence. The fence symbolises isolation – as much from the EU as from sections of society – and the return to the world order of a supposedly historic time of splendid isolation: She throws antiquities

 Smith, Ali: Autum. London: Penguin 2016, p. 181 (eBook).  Ibid., p. 119. 10  Cf. e.g. E.g. Perryman, Mark: Imagined Nation: England After Britain. London: Lawrence & Wishart 2008, p. 31. 8 9

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against the fence and thus uses real witnesses of the past to fight against the recourse to a historiography due to imagination.11 The tenor of the novel Autumn is a disenchantment with politics and a scepticism of the elite that unites the characters of different political hues: “I’m tired of having to wonder whether they did it out of stupidity or did it on purpose”.12 Despite the further commonality of distrusting facts,13 Smith sketches the picture of a divided society14 whose members, insisting on their respective points of view, are refusing discussions and dialogue: “It has become a time of people saying stuff to each other and none of it actually ever becoming dialogue. It is the end of dialogue”.15 In the novel, both auto-reflection and media reflection are described as a way to overcome egocentric speech and to open up, and language is said to have the capacity to develop a sense of potentiality and a sense of possibility (Musil) – and thus to create a kind of dwelling, a home, as Daniel Elisabeth points out: “So always try to welcome people into the home of your story. […] And always give them a choice – even those characters […]. By which I mean characters who seem to have no choice at all. Always give them a home”.16 Consequently, the novel strikes a conciliatory tone, especially in moments of self- and media reflection, and also highlights the positive aspects of choice in light of the Brexit referendum. The reflections of Daniel Gluck, who as an immigrant has found a new home, a new homeland, sound like an appeal to the powerfully eloquent voters and politicians alike not to reject and repress those voters who, like the characters Daniel speaks of, seem to be powerless and speechless, but to open up to them as well. A similar conciliatory note is attempted by Anthony Cartwright in his novel The Cut,17 although he also describes a divided society. He not only focuses on cosmopolitans with the power eloquence and rhetorical skills provide, but also gives a voice to the ‘silent citizens’ and lets them describe the feeling to be unseen, having no choice and being unhoused in the modern age. In this way, his novel joins the ranks of literary works that focus on characters whose central characteristic is their belonging to the ‘popular milieu’, since this feeds their self-image. These characters, then, belong to a group of workers, who ‘are dominated at work by others and are also socially and economically vulnerable’.18 The literature shows the mood of

 Cf. Smith 2016a, p. 255.  Ibid., p. 57. 13  Cf. ibid., p. 137. 14  Cf. e.g. e.g. ibid., p. 60 f. 15  Ibid., p. 112. 16  Ibid., p. 119 f. 17  Cf. Cartwright, Anthony: The Cut. London: Peirene Press 2017. 18  Marchand, Christele/Weill, Pierre Edouard: The Popular Milieus. How ‘silent citizens’ judge Europe, in: Daniel Gaxie, Nicolas Hubé, Marine de Lasalle, Jay Rowell (eds.): Das Europa der Europäer. Über die Wahrnehmung eines politischen Raums, transl. by Franz Weigand and Markus Merz. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2011, pp. 261–284, here p. 262 (eBook); cf. Schwartz, Oliver: Le Monde privé des ouvriers. Hommes et femmes du Nord. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France 2002. 11 12

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these ‘silent citizens’, who feel powerless because of their existential fears and the threat of economic and social decline, which they hope to overcome by voting for Brexit. They hope to gain self-empowerment and agency through secession from the EU and independence. They hope to be able to shed a diffuse sense of threat posed by the Economic and Monetary Union, freedom of movement and European integration. They think Brexit would guaratee, that they would no longer see their jobs and social position threatened by foreign workers and commercial enterprises. The author shows the ways in which socialization factors, political experiences, and attitudes toward Europe depend on national and international economic crises and related social restructuring. He illustrates the influence that milieu can have on characters and thus on individual fate, and in this context explicates how milieu-­ dependent everyday experiences and experiences with the foreign are and how they influence attitudes towards Europe and the self-image as a European, a resident of a particular city and region, or a citizen of a nation. This self-description emerges against the background of milieu depictions, political socialisation through family, social environment and working life. The characters often do not understand Europe as a community of values and culture, but reduce Europe to the function it has as an economic area for the national market, insofar as this has a direct influence on their everyday working lives. This largely prevents them to develop an European identity as well as an accommodating attitude towards pan-European political and economic crises, because the “cultural and value community of Europe is the safety net in which the small and large political crashes can be absorbed”.19 The literature portrays the characters’ intolerance of such crashes and the reinforcing effect this has on the diffuse sense of threat posed by political, economic and social pan-European crises and the fear of economic and social decline. The title of Anthony Cartwright’s 2017 novel The Cut, commissioned by Peirene Press on the occasion of the Brexit referendum, referes on one hand to the cut that leads through society and on the other to the cut the Brexit referendum and Brexit are with regard to the history of Great Britain and the nations relationship with Europe. Like Ali Smith before him, Cartwright juxtaposes cosmopolitan openness and nationalism  – in this novel in the form of regionalism  – embodied by the London-based documentary filmmaker Grace Trevithick and the protagonist of her film, Cairo Jukes. Jukes’ worldview and actions disclose his regional identity and therefore he speaks for the people of the countryside which, as a result of Margaret Thatcher’s promotion of the global, post-industrial economy, has lost the prosperity it acquired in the early stages of industrialisation through the dismantling of industry and the accompanying job losses, namely the Midlands and Wales.20 The  König, Helmut: Statt einer Einleitung: Europas Gedächtnis. Sondierungen in einem unübersichtlich Gelände, in: Helmut König, Julia Schmidt, Manfred Sicking (eds.): Europas Gedächtnis. Das neue Europa zwischen nationalen Erinnerungen und gemeinsamer Identität. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2008, pp. 9–37, here: S. 9 (eBook). 20  Cf. e.g. Jones, Martin/Orford, Scott/Macfarlane, Victoria (eds.): People, Places and Policy. Knowing contemporary Wales through new localities. London/New York: Routledge 2016. 19

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example of the fictional character Cairo Jukes reveals the ways in which the past economic crisis, which nevertheless persists into the present, and the economic policies of Margaret Thatcher generate a diffuse nostalgia and longing for the halfremembered, half-imagined economic security, promise of prosperity and pride in economic achievement.21 Moreover, it is clear how nostalgia and longing, combined with an outrage and an attempt to overcome feelings of powerlessness and lack of action in a gesture of rebellion, foster the emergence of a nationalist mindset. Cartwright also traces the defiant bickering with modernity and the consequences of globalization to the incomprehension and irreconcilability of cosmopolitans who remain strangers to each other even as they attempt rapprochement, as he illustrates through the interaction of Jukes and Trevithick. While the documentary filmmaker has formed an European identity with little anchoring in the national, Jukes sees himself linked to a specific landscape – even an industrial landscape – and is nevertheless – or precisely because of this – a ‘silent citizen’ who counts himself among the “ghost people […] [,] lost tribes”.22 He tries to overcome his speechlessness and the feeling of invisibility, and thus at the same time tries to bring the country to which he feels connected into the focus of the world public and cosmopolitan recipients of the film, and to make them aware of it by stepping in front of the camera as an embodiment of the country to which he gives voice: “He wanted to say something, about the sense of his world being made invisible, mute”.23 This hope mirrors that of many Brexit voters, but the vote and the Brexit secession process, just like the production of the documentary, do not lead to a closeness, a mutual acceptance of the other’s worldview, because the characters – representative of entire social groups – remain irreconcilable and alien to each other, even when they fall in love. Nevertheless, they try to engage in dialogue  – and therein lies the opportunity for a possible reconciliation. Cartwright contrasts action and reaction, justifying origin and result, in chapters titled ‘Before’ and ‘After’, revealing contexts of justification. At the same time he describes a deepening of conflict and division in society. The struggle of such generally opposing and contradictionary characters to understand each other, however, allows hope for a renewal of society and a gradual overcoming of the rifts between the social groups that have opposed each other before and after the referendum; this is the hope the novel is intended to nourish, for it was commissioned to build a ‘fictional bridge between the two Britains that have opposed each other since the referendum’.24 Narratives and novels that depict Brexit as a social crisis show that the vote preceding Brexit and the process of political and economic secession from the EU – similar to previous historical breaks such as the September 2001 attacks in the USA or the end of the East-West divide in 1989 – have “brought questions of identity and

 Cf. Cartwright 2017, p. 111 f.  Ibid., p. 100. 23  Ibid., p. 30. 24  Ibid., n.d. 21 22

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discourses of self-understanding back to the centre of societies”25 and the “questions of who we are and how we want to live”.26 If these questions of identity are posed in novels and narratives that refer to the tradition of the social novel or refer to literary models, and if references to previous economic or social crises are made within an explanatory context, then Brexit appears as one more crisis among many and not as an “unprecedented historic moment for the nation […] [which] has resulted in a form of political isolationism unthinkable at the turn of the millennium”.27

2 Brexit: The Decision of a Nation “Generally speaking, there can be no answers to questions of identity, that is, who we are and how we want to live, without including the question of who we were yesterday and how we lived yesterday.”28 Literature and film self-reflexively show that answers to these questions are not given by history, social science or anthropology, but are provided by literature, films and series. They are based on a literary tradition that tends to be anti-European, for which, among other things, “the nostalgic appetite for (an admittedly false) national heritage […] and a mourning for the imperial past”29 is significant. The BrexLit is distinguished by the fact that so far post-Brexit utopias, which stand in the tradition of anti-European literature and explicitly describe the Brexit as the beginning of a ‘golden age’, seem to be missing. In order to understand the hopes of Brexiteers attached to the referendum decision in favour of Brexit, and the nostalgia as well as the disenchantment with modernity – and even postmodernity! –, it is advisable to look at texts that are said to have influenced many voters in their decision to vote for Brexit. In these texts, the British Empire and an England that preserved the way of life of that time are presented – often in contrast to scholarly accounts – as protected spaces with largely intact societies free of fundamental social conflicts and with relative economic security. Behind this image fades the reality of the British Empire as a community of values with a common and not infrequently conflict-ridden past, whereby after the disintegration of the world empire Great Britain not only lost its political, military and cultural supremacy, but also its importance for the economic areas that split off from the empire. The preservation and establishment of bilateral obligations and commonalities can no longer take place under military coercion, but is based on the goodwill and accommodation of the other states, even if international trade relations or common interests are sometimes based on the basis of the common past. In the representations of the disintegrating Empire as well as in the Brexit debates  König 2008, p. 11.  Cf. Eaglestone, Robert: Introduction. Brexit and literature, in: Ders. (ed.): Brexit and Literature. Critical and Cultural Responses. London/New York: Routledge 2018, pp. 1–6, esp. p. 3 (eBook). 27  Shaw 2018, p. 15. 28  König 2008, p. 11. 29  Shaw 2018, p. 18. 25 26

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thematized in novels and films, the question of a “political significance of memory and the possibility of instrumentalizing memories for political purposes”30 is virulent. The debate is characterised by a competition of commemorative spaces, because on one hand there is a recourse to the glorious past of the Empire with the Victorian age as a point of reference, and on the other hand to the period of EU accession, which, however, does not develop a similar comparable mythical potential. The mythologically charged British Empire31 is invoked as legitimation and model for a political order that is hoped to be the result of Brexit and the subsequent process of secession from the EU without far-reaching losses; consequently, a “congruence between national culture and political order”32 is suggested. The representations of Brexit, like the representations of the British Empire make it clear that the cultural goods marked as national – even if they have their origins in other cultures of the Empire than the British – could not be re-evaluated into European cultural goods and placed in a European context, since they are in the cultural memory linked to a specific national and anti-European world order.33 For the texts, from whose pool the series and film Downton Abbey will be briefly presented below as exemplary, it is significant that commemorative spaces and a diffuse sense of home and nationality are not produced through the invocation of national heroes, but through the sketching of wealthy individuals, who sometimes play an influential role in politics, and ‘silent citizens’. Their individual histories are closely linked to the transformation of the political and economic circumstances brought about by the collapse of empire and the First World War. Thus, no national heroes who could be remodelled into role models with an European identity are presented. What is marked as national and the identity of figures presented as national are valorised, rather than being revalorised into European cultural assets and embodyments of European identity.34 Series and films dealing with the British Empire and the preservation of the (family) world order after the collapse of the Empire, as well as the film Brexit and novels dealing with the behind-the-scenes proceedings of the Brexit referendum and the process of secession from the EU, illustrate how closely literary fiction “can be linked to political reality.35 Equally, they demonstrate that ‘realpolitik [is] often interspersed with fiction – myths, stereotypes, traditions, utopias’. Often enough,  König 2008, p. 14.  Cf. also Anderson, Benedict: Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London/New York: Verso 2006. 32  König 2008, p. 19. 33  Interestingly, as the international popularity of series such as Downton Abbey, The Crown or Victoria show, it is not only in Great Britain that memory constructions linked to a nation are given preference over collective European memories and memory constructions linking the member states of the EU. 34  Cf. Rother, Rainer: Nationen im Film, in: Ders. (ed.): Mythen der Nationen. Völker im Film. Munich. Berlin: Koehler & Amelang Verlag 1998, pp. 9–16. 35  Marti, Roland/Vogt, Henri: Vorwort der Herausgeber, in: Roland Marti, Henri Vogt (eds.): Europa zwischen Fiktion und Realpolitik/ L’Europe – fictions et réalités politiques. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2010, pp. 11–14, here: P. 13 (eBook). 30 31

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literary fiction is more ‘real’ than the supposed ‘reality’ of everyday politics”36 – even if it is a historical reality. Such stereotypes and myths, which are disseminated in films and series, are also referred to in statements on Brexit – before and after the vote –, especially by Brexiteers. Myths are “deployed as common reference points, especially in situations of upheaval”,37 as they are meant to ease crises and transitions: They legitimize the new political order referring to the mythical one. Not only the myths invoked in political speech, but also the myths and stereotypes varied in films and series, as well as in literature and the visual arts, are over-shaping real historical events and experiences, alienating them and making them unforgettable. Films and series such as Downton Abbey illustrate that the historical reality referred to in the series is overlaid by the image presented in the media. As a result, they can “connect generations of the population separated by different experiences of life and history”38 and “transcend or even heal social structural fault lines.”39 Series such as Downton Abbey40 show that, even in the twenty-first century, the medium of film has “contributed significantly to the self-image of nations”41 and that it “play[s] a significant role in the consolidation and popularization of the already established national historiography […]”.42 They illustrate, moreover, that an anti-modern reflex is inscribed in the image of a nation after the collapse of the Empire on the threshold of a new century – the narrated period extends from about 1914 to 1925 in the series and to 1927 in the film – for the preservation of (family) tradition and its continuation, as well as the preservation of the place in England marked as home, are repeatedly stated as the central maxim of the characters’ actions and the origin of their decisions. The preservation of the property and the household of the Earl and Countess of Grantham are not only the subject of the series, but also of the film that follows it.43 Although modernization issues such as the search for new roles of women after their female emancipation and their involvement in the emancipation movement, the devaluation of traditional gender and family images, or alternative gender relations are put up for debate, the film Downton Abbey confirms the dominant impression given by the series: This focuses on issues that arise with the onset of modernity, namely “on contradictions, on confusion, on the incalculability of roles, on the increase of options in life, on socio-moral  Ibid., p. 13.  Heer, Sebastian: Politischer Mythos, Legitimität und Ordnungskonstruktion, in: Werner J. Patzelt (ed.): Die Machbarkeit politischer Ordnung. Transzendenz und Konstruktion. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2013, pp. 99–126, here: p. 112 (eBook). 38  Leggewie, Claus: Der Mythos des Neuanfangs  – Gründungsetappen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: 1949–1968–1989, in: Helmut Berding (ed.): Mythos und Nation. Studien zur Entwicklung des kollektiven Bewusstseins in der Neuzeit. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1996, pp. 275–302, here: S. 288. 39  Ibid., p. 288. 40  Downton Abbey, UK 2010–2015. 41  Quenzel, Gudrun: Konstruktionen von Europa. Die europäische Identität und die Kulturpolitik der Europäischen Union.. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2005, p. 154 (eBook). 42  Ibid., p. 154. 43  Downton Abbey, UK 2019, directed by Michael Engler. 36 37

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pluralism, on the loss of collective self-evidence, on deficits of control and supervision, and on a general unease”44 with modernity. These issues are then answered by emphasizing and returning to conservative values, traditions and patterns of action, thereby resolving conflicts. No utopia of equality is developed here. Although class barriers can be formally abolished in extreme situations, they remain in the consciousness because they are constantly thematised and addressed. On Downton Abbey, not only are the values and traditions handed down from the Victorian and Empire periods upheld, but also the social understanding, which is why the social order – at least within the framework of the household – is always maintained. By concentrating on the household and the estate of Downton Abbey and the changing fates of the current and former residents, the owners and servants of the house, a sense of home is linked through narration to concrete social spaces. The location enables to suggest continuity despite changing personnel, which corresponds with the adherence to the estate and Lord Grantham’s intended succession despite all financial hurdles. It also uses different characters to illustrate how social spaces provide support and orientation, as these are tied back to different types of community – be it community in the form of a family unit, the servants of a house, a political or lifestyle group, or a group bound together in conflict. By focusing on the household of Downton Abbey, a comprehensive “social (re)construction of home”45 is achieved, that encompasses all of the main characters and most of the supporting characters. The order of the household and possessions mirrors the order of the world. Home thus becomes tangible as “a construction of order that owes its apparent ‘naturalness’ to the success of many everyday practical processes of production,”46 which are also comprehensively represented in the series and addressed in character speech. Home appears in the series as a construction that also disentangles, organizes and arranges the confusing, multi-faceted world of modernity and provides a seemingly easily manageable regulatory system. It is produced through the narration on two levels: The narration of the series and the narratives of the characters, which also tell their individual fates before their arrival at Downton Abbey, are not to be interpreted in any other way. It is not a detailed reproduction of historical events in narratives, but rather an interpretation and evaluation of the events experienced from the perspective of the narrator, their transformation and interpretation of meaning from a sought or found ‘place of origin’.47

Due to the large cast of characters, who come from different milieus, the impression is given that the narration of the series is an intersubjective narrative. Through the  Nassehi, Armin: Nicht nur die Rechten. Warum die Moderne so anstrengend ist. Hamburg: Sven Murmann Verlagsgesellschaft 2016, p. 5 (eBook). 45  Klose, Joachim: ‘Heimat’ als gelingende Ordnungskonstruktion, in: Werner J. Patzelt (ed.): Die Machbarkeit politischer Ordnung. Transcendence and Construction. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2013, pp. 391–416, here: p. 412 (eBook). 46  Ibid., p. 391. 47  Ibid., p. 408. 44

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relationships of all the characters, including those who come from a foreign country or move temporarily in a foreign country, to Downton Abbey and the inhabitants of the house, a link to certain (social) spaces is achieved, embedded in an overlapping of historiography with the characters’ experiential sequences.48 Downton Abbey is constructed as a miniature version of the nation, for the characters are mostly recognizable as representatives of social groups or political factions, and through the individual stories, social conflicts as well as political and economic crises are narrated and negotiated. The characters and their experiences thus function on tone hand as a mirror of society and the world of the beginning of the twentieth century, and on the other hand they embody the values and social pecking-order of the Empire and the nineteenth century. As representatives of the social body, they archive the resurrection of a nation from the ruins of the Empire, while retaining the self-image associated with this political order, comprehensible to the viewer. This also enables an reference to the “fable of the wise nation”49 . Moreover, the adherence to nineteenth century ideas and worldview is presented as the epitome of ‘Englishness’. Even more impressive than the run of the show is the content of the series, because it varies a construction of social order, a presentation of characters and levels of conflict that have already been successfully presented in other historical films and series such as Upstairs, Downstairs50 – and this just at the time when Great Britain joined the EU. Here, the self-image and demeanour of British politicians during negotiations with the EU should be noted. Despite the self-confident appearance of British politicians and the self-image as a world power, the films and series give the impression that Great Britain “was never in fact a state that had chosen to support others, but a world empire that was falling apart and whose statehood was saved by European integration”.51 The series and film Downton Abbey continue the tradition of these media and the content they convey. The popularity of the series and the film of the same name show that the siren song of the self-image conjured up in the series and of a diffuse nostalgia that eludes modernity and postmodernity has not fallen silent even in the face of globalization, but has acquired new urgency, since it largely coincides with the image of Great Britain and the ‘Britishness’ – if not the ‘Englishness’ – of its people propagated by the Brexiteers. Should it come as a surprise that the series is said to have had an influence on the referendum result?52

 Cf. ibid., p. 409 f.  Snyder, Timothy: Der Weg in die Unfreiheit. Russia. Europe. America, transl. by Ulla Höbner and Werner Roller. Munich: C. H. Beck 2018, p. 116 (eBook). 50  Upstairs, Downstairs, GB 1971–1975, production: John Hawkesworth. 51  Snyder 2018, p. 116. 52  Cf. e.g. B. Upstone, Sara: Do novels tell us how to vote?, in: Robert Eaglestone (ed.): Brexit and Literature. Critical and Cultural Responses. London/New York: Routledge 2018, pp.  44–58 (eBook). 48 49

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3 Brexit: Thought Up by Politicians, Made by the Media The Brexit-pre-referendum-debate was influenced not only by texts like Downtown Abbey which took a nostalgic look at the past and developed different notions and concepts of a ‘nation’ and ‘national character’, but also by the current journalistic narrative and advertising campaigns that were taken up, revisited and commented on in print and online media. A glimpse behind the doors of media houses and the offices of political strategists where pro-Leave propaganda was developed is provided by the semi-realistic TV feature film Brexit. The uncivil war53 and novels such as Head of State. A Political Entertainment by Andrew Marr. The narrated time encompasses the period of days before and after the referendum and the novel reflects upon “sensational political times”.54 The referendum was slicing the country down the middle. The British had always been a people slow to feel political enthusiasm – one of the great secrets of their national survival. But now, families were dividing over supper tables, and offices were driven by arguments about a subject bigger than football or waxing.55

In his novel, by describing the instrumentalization of “one of Britain’s once-great newspapers, the National Courier”56 and the deliberations of editor-in-chief Ken Cooper and journalist Lucien McBryde, Marr shows the ways in which mass media controls the scope and quality of political debates through publication decisions influenced by personal connections,57 economic constraints, and journalistic considerations,58 and thus grow beyond their functionalization of politicians and political groups into a ‘fourth estate’ comparable to a political institution.59 The problem that emerges – in addition to the possible political incompetence of journalists, their manipulability and lack of professional integrity60 – is that mass media cannot be held accountable for their actions.61 In his media and political satire, Marr illustrates how absurd concepts like the idea of super-personal, ‘neutral reporting’, ‘neutral’ media and media technologies seem to be. He exposes the premise of a general interest in knowledge by journalists aimed at neutrality as an illusion. His descriptions of the editor-in-chief and the murdered investigative journalist McBryde illustrate, alongside the repeated thematisation of the different reporting in the  Brexit. The uncivil war, GB 2019, directed by Toby Haynes.  Marr, Andrew: Head of State. A Political Entertainment. London/Sydney/Toronto (et al.): HarperCollins 2014, pp. 39 f. (eBook). 55  Marr 2014, p. 39 f. 56  Ibid., p. 35. 57  Cf. e.g. ibid., p. 575 ff. 58  Cf. ibid., p. 75 ff. and p. 144 f. 59  Cf. Cook, Timothy: Governing with the News. The News Media as a Political Institution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1998, p. 167. 60  Cf. e.g. Marr 2014, p. 180 ff. 61  Cf. Cook 1998, pp. 167–169. 53 54

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various newspapers  – ‘none of them was entirely clear about which story to run with62’ – that there can be no neutrality in the mediation of reality and – in a selfreflexive gesture – that the novel itself also represents an interpretation of events and historical reality. Marr shows how journalists and media moguls become actors in national politics through their reporting, or the reporting they instigate, and believe they gain exclusivity through their relationship with political rulers. He takes a look at media influence on political processes in general and outlines the mechanisms and effectiveness of controlling media effects. Motifs such as the murder of the investigative journalist demonstrate that “nowadays […] investigative journalism [is] becoming increasingly irreplaceable as growing inequality fuels political fiction.”63 The author of the novel, however, puts the relevance of the media to politics itself – if not the influence on the formation of the recipients’ opinions – into perspective by illustrating in the last chapters of his novel that journalists – and even those involved in the political processes through friendships and loyalty to assassinated employees such as Ken Cooper – cannot understand and unravel the political dealings such as the reasons for the assassination of the Prime Minister or the financial scandal associated with the referendum. Even scholars64 entrusted with the draft of an official historiography, such as Lord Trevor Briskett, struggle with “the journalist’s age-old dilemma – do we keep in with the boss classes, keep talking to them, and keep getting the stories; or do we burn our bridges and retire from the fray?”65 Autoreflexively, an author of literature is absolved of such considerations. Accordingly, Myfanwy Davies-Jones, a Welsh writer, advises: “No problem at all, sweetie. […] Make it a novel. Much more fun.”66 Marr attempts a conciliatory gesture by having Jennifer Lewis, known as Jen, the daughter of Myfanwy, and former chief analyst for a Eurosceptic grouping within Parliament and associate of the head of the ‘No’ campaign Olivia Kite, outline a positive outlook for the future in the final chapter of the novel: And they were living, after all, in a new country. There would be less money about, it was true. But all that money sloshing around in the old days hadn’t made the British happier, or more useful, had it? Now they had the chance of a new start.67

The course of the campaign for a new start is outlined in the film Brexit,68 which at the outset hints that its semi-documentary.69 Through the repeated addressing of Cummings’ struggle for power and his intention to run the campaign solely according to his ideas, the depiction of the discussions with politicians, lobbyists and  Cf. e.g. Marr 2014, p. 576 f.  Snyder 2018, p. 20. 64  Cf. Marr 2014, p. 53 f. 65  Ibid., p. 612. 66  Ibid., p. 612. 67  Ibid., p. 608. 68  Brexit. The uncivil war, GB 2019, directed by Toby Haynes. 69  Ibid., 0:00:10 ff. 62 63

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contractors such as the Canadian consulting and technology company Aggregate IQ, as well as Cummings’ attempts at self-explanation, the film brings different mechanisms and means of targeted manipulation into view. It shows the way in which the media coverage is tied to an overall strategic context. The film shows the power of manipulation of mass media and advertising, but especially sheds light on targeted election campaigns on the Internet through micro-­ targeting, disguised as ‘neutral’ information provision or ‘personal impression’ and disseminated via social bots such as Googlebots, Twitterbots, chatbots and similar programming options, and the power that the strategists of propaganda campaigns hold and exercise. The placement of different bots blurs the lines between news reporting and entertainment communication, engaging readers in different ways, including in supposedly private exchanges with like-minded people, and achieving discursive domination. One premise that outlines the thinking of Cummings and his team is, that slogans should function like affirmations. Combined with sustained negative coverage, such slogans lead to skepticism and rejection among viewers. Another concept seems to be, that mass media, especially the information delivery capabilities of the Internet, can be used to influence political processes through the dissemination of appeals and misinformation as well as through the alienation of facts from their context and whereby they appear distorted. The aim is to exert control over recipients’ opinions. The film retraces the development and dissemination of constantly repeated, simply structured slogans such as ‘Take back control’, whose meaning is so unclear that they open up a wide room for interpretation and do not stimulate intellectually, but appeal to elusive feelings such as repressed fears or an unacknowledged nostalgia. The “reduction of political operational reality”70 created by simplicity and repetition also makes it possible to spread misinformation without having to explain it. The film illustrates how such slogans fuel patriotism and xenophobia in an ambiguous way. Due to the reduction of the complexity of political contexts and processes and due to the use of key words, digital and analogue advertising and reporting are comparable to those in the times of war, because images of an enemy are also created and disseminated. The film illustrates that – despite the high visibility, general accessibility and transparency of EU institutions and their self-portrayal on the Internet and in international media – a distortion of the EU in national media and the dissemination of misinformation are possible. It is demonstrated that propaganda does not work because of censorship or a deliberate shortage of information on the part of politicians, but that propaganda effects how opinions are formed through a deliberate distortion of representation. Due to media oversaturation, the recipient, feeling overwhelmed by the complexity and multifaceted nature of the information accessible on the Internet and in other media, longs for easily comprehensible clear patterns and easy-to-grasp (language) structures. Complex contexts are thus strategically confused and linked to the EU scepticism established in the media since the 1970s. Familiar stereotypes and images of the ‘enemy’ are evoken in order to  Brand, Alexander: Medien Diskurs Weltpolitik. Wie Massenmedien die internationale Politik beeinflussen. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2012, p. 42 (eBook). 70

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supposedly provide access to the discussions and to the political decision-making processes and to create a simplifying overview – but in fact this creates a distortion of reality. Europe serves Cummings as a cipher for everything bad that has happened.71 Due to the “multi-perspectivity of mass media coverage”72 typical of conservative media such as the BBC, Cummings is able to achieve a dominance of the discourse, as the buzzwords formulated by him and under his aegis are juxtaposed with the more detailed accounts of complicated contexts of his ‘opponents’. In the representations of Brexit and the election campaign that preceded it, it becomes apparent how the fictive inscribes itself into (empirical) reality and how the boundaries become permeable. It becomes apparent that and in what way the “real and the visual are permeably interwoven against and with each other […]. The real is not real through and through, but includes virtuality components, and likewise the virtual includes too many moments of reality for it to be considered virtual per se”.73

4 Brexit: The Transformation of Fiction into Politics and Back Again In the film Brexit, the phantasmagorias referred to in the pro-Brexit campaign are named and discussed in terms of their effective power, as are the illusionary images created within the framework of the propaganda. In this way, the transformation of fiction into politics is described. In the film Dominic McKenzie Cummings’ enthusiasm for Russian culture and politics is not discussed as a motivation for his actions. The idea that Russia, guided by a powerful Russian prime minister, might have an increased interest in breaking up and weakening the EU is put forward by British politicians and authors of political satires such as Stanley Johnson in his Brexit novel Kompromat, but also by academics such as Timothy Snyder in The Road to Unfreedom.74 The argument in both, the novel and the academic literature, is similar: Both publications point to Russia gaining power by weakening or even breaking up the EU and stalling EU enlargement. Snyder links Russia’s EU policies to a weakening of democracy in countries leaving or struggling with the EU,75 while Johnson depicts undemocratic political processes and undemocratic behaviour of manipulative and corruptible top politicians seeking a Brexit with Russia’s help and

 Brexit. The uncivil war, GB 2019, Director: Toby Haynes, 0:17:33 ff.  Brand 2012, p. 84. 73  Welsch, Wolfgang: “Wirklich”. Bedeutungsvarianten – Modelle – Wirklichkeit und Virtualität, in: Sybille Krämer (ed.): Medien  – Computer  – Realität. Wirklichkeitsvorstellungen und neue Medien. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1998, pp. 169–212, here: p. 210. Cf. also Benjamin Jörissen: Beobachtungen der Realität. Die Frage nach der Wirklichkeit im Zeitalter der neuen Medien. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2007 (eBook). 74  Cf. Snyder 2018. 75  Cf. also Mounk, Yascha: Der Zerfall der Demokratie. Wie der Populismus den Rechtsstaat bedroht, transl. by Bernhard Jendricke. Munich: Droemer Verlag 2018 (eBook). 71 72

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support. The fictional Russian President Igor Popov and his closest confidant, Yuri Yasonov, leak information to the politician described as the leader of the Eurosceptic wing of the UK Conservative Party,76 Edward Barnard, which shows that the Prime Minister had been enticed into announcing a referendum on remaining in the EU by Russian bribes.77 Bernard’s insight into Russian bribery methods and his realisation that leading politicians such as Prime Minister Jeremy Hartley were so easily manipulated makes it easier for him to understand international dynamics as well as political decisions previously incomprehensible to him, as he first reflects on his surprise at the announcement of a referendum: I couldn’t believe my ears. Speaking personally, I was over the moon. As Eurosceptics, we all were. We had been hoping for something like that – giving the country a say on the UK’s membership in the EU after forty years – but we never imagined we’d actually get it. […] Politically speaking, it [the announcement of the referendum] was quite unnecessary. The government wasn’t under any kind of threat. The prime minister wasn’t under any kind of pressure, and so at the time, however delighted I might have been in a personal sense, I simply couldn’t imagine why he had done it.78

The insight into the background of national and international politics provided by Russia’s most senior politicians not only allows Bernard’s political career to continue, but enables a win-win situation from the Russian perspective, as the head of MI5, Dame Jane Potter, points out: They hand the tape to Edward Bernard, knowing that if it becomes public the prime minister is finished. […] He is committed, politically and personally, to archive victory for the Remain camp in the referendum. If he is out on his ear and possibly heading for jail, and if these documents become public, the prospects of Remain winning the vote will suddenly look much thinner than they do today. Precisely the objective the Russians are aiming at. They are fed up with the EU. They would like to get rid of it. Brexit is off to a good start.79

Chinese politician and intelligence analyst Deng Biao-Su suggests that Britain’s exit would not only weaken the EU financially and structurally, but – with Russia’s help – would result in the re-election of the pro-Russian American president.80 This in turn would have consequences for the political landscape of all European states: And both events, taken together, will kick-start a great wave of popularism in Europe […]. That wave of popularism is based on the idea that the people themselves will and must take back control’. We will see a resurgence of the ‘Europe of the nations’, not the United Europe that the founding fathers like Monnet and Schuman aimed at.81

 Cf. Johnson, Stanley: Kompromat. A Brexit Affair. London: Oneworld Publications 2017, p. 108 (eBook). 77  Cf. ibid., p. 126 ff. 78  Ibid., p. 110 f. 79  Ibid., p. 143 f., cf. Snyder 2018, p. 115 f. 80  Cf. Snyder 2018, p. 115. 81  Johnson 2017, p. 175 f. and cf. Snyder 2018, p. 108 ff. 76

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Snyder analyzes the current political situation similarly and also establishes a direct link between the destabilization of democratic systems by populist movements, right-wing parties, and populist politicians with autocratic traits and the weakening or disintegration of the EU through Brexit. He points out the closeness of populist, anti-EU politicians such as Marie Le Pen, the Austrian FPÖ politicians, Silvio Berlusconi and pro-Brexit politicians such as Nigel Farage or Matthew Elliott to Putin and also refers to Farage’s appearances in Russian media in which he had appeared to be enthusiastic about Putin and his policies.82 The Yale historian traces several attempts by Russia to intervene in the national politics of EU member states, significantly the UK, and to encourage politicians and voters alike to vote for Brexit.83 Johnson also paints a picture – often consistent with Snyder’s theses and patterns of argumentation – of Russia’s influence on British politics before and after the referendum and on politicians of different parties. For example, in one scene he describes the Russian prime minister reading a text on his mobile phone during a meeting, in which the new British prime minister, Mabel Killick, announces the Brexit referendum and launches the Brexit process officially. Johnson suggests that the speech was known to the Russian prime minister beforehand.84 In the fiftieth chapter of his novel, Johnson traces the further possible course of Popov’s foreign policy and describes him making plans for a continued influence on top British and American politicians. Johnson reflects on the real-life implications of his novel, a political satire, and on the debates surrounding the referendum and illustrates, how Brexit is influenced by the spread of fake news on television and the Internet by having Popov exclaim, “Fake news! God, how I hate it! […] They’ll be writing Fake Books next!”85 Like Johnson, John le Carré’s agent thriller Agent running in the Field characterises the Brexit referendum as the result of an international conspiracy uncovered by his main character, Secret Service agent Anatoly, known as Nathaniel, Nat, whom his superior calls a ‘British archetype’.86 Dubbed ‘Jericho’ – a reference to the fall of the wall of integrity of the EU – the project is a pact between Britain and the US87 to destabilise the EU and disintegrate member states by any means available to the intelligence services. From the embassy employee Renate, called Reni, he learns that Ed Shannon has revealed that ‘Jericho’ is the name of an “Anglo-American covert operation, already in the planning stage with the dual aim of undermining the social democratic institutions of the European Union and dismantling our international trading tariffs”.88

 Cf. Snyder 2018, p. 115.  Cf. ibid., pp. 114 ff, pp. 221 ff, pp. 235 ff, 84  Cf. Johnson 2017, p. 781 ff. 85  Ibid., p. 798. 86  Carré, John le: Agent running in the Field. London/New York/Toronto (et al.): Penguin 2019, p. 46 (eBook). 87  Cf. ibid., p. 520 ff. 88  Ibid., p. 547. 82 83

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Nat sympathises with Ed as he enjoys the company and conversation with his new friend. A conversation with his daughter Stefanie, known as Stef, reveals that his view of British and international politics is similar to Ed’s. Nat outlines his impression of the state of the British political landscape: “A minority Tory cabinet to tenth-raters. A pig-ignorant foreign secretary who I’m supposed to be serving. Labour no better. The sheer bloody lunacy of Brexit”.89 Nat’s younger badminton partner Ed Shannon, like Nat, opposes Brexit and makes a reference to the US, whose president he also criticises: It is my considered opinion that for Britain and Europe, and for liberal democracy across the entire world as a whole, Britain’s departure from the European Union in the time of Donald Trump, and Britain’s consequent unqualified dependence on the United States in an era when the US is heading straight down the road to institutional racism and neo-fascism, is an unmitigated clusterfuck bar none. […] Brexit is the most important decision facing Britain since 1939, in my opinion.90

The radical nature of his political convictions, however, also makes Ed a contact for the secret services. Even as an employee of the British, he is so outraged by the ‘Jericho’ project, which he learns about while copying secret documents, that he himself seeks contact with the German secret service and, rejected by the latter, is approached by the Russian. With the help of Ed’s fiancée, the secret service agent Florence, Nat tries to protect him from the consequences of his actions and arranges for them to leave the country together. However, when Ed learns of Nat’s employment with the Secret Service, he breaks off the friendship.91 The former friends’ irreconcilable parting reflects the difference in their worldview, which was temporarily overcome by shared political convictions and a common rejection of Brexit. In political and agent thrillers, as in political satires, the Brexit is described as the result of an international conspiracy. It comes about either through the desire for power and the manipulability of individual top British politicians who put their personal gain above the good of their country, or through the pursuit of economic profit maximisation by the British government. Brexit is portrayed as the elite project of politicians and the intelligence services of Britain and other countries, rather than the result of an independent and uninfluenced popular will.

5 Brexit: A Political Satire in Light of European Literature Brexit and the referendum that preceded it are not only addressed in political thrillers, but also in political satires that explicitly refer to canonic European literature and thus not only inscribe themselves in this tradition, but also reveal their pro-­ European undertone. These literary texts are accordingly based on an advocacy of remaining in the EU.  Ibid., p. 103.  Ibid., p. 145 f., cf. p. 157 f. 91  Ibid., p. 623 f. 89 90

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The Cockroach by Ian McEwan belongs to this type of political satire. The first-­ person narrative begins with a reference to Franz Kafka’s story The Metamorphosis. Unlike Gregor Samsa, who experiences himself as transformed into a vermin, there is a cockroach in the skin of British Prime Minister Jim Sams. The descriptions of the perception of metamorphosis are similar, as are the names of the characters. Through the intertextual references and quotations, McEwan refers as much to the canon of German literature as to the canon of European literature and to the interpretive tradition of Kafka’s narrative as to all the layers of meaning of the English term ‘Kafka-esque’. Like in English, the German term denotes, on one hand, intertextual references, whether literal quotations or the description of a situation that corresponds to those described by Kafka and which is similarly unpleasant, frightening, confusing or threatening to one’s existence. McEwan meets this definition through the structure as well as the content of the first chapter of his short novel. As the novel progresses, Kafka’s narrative and McEwan’s novel diverge, but the British writer aligns himself with the other levels of meaning of the term by portraying the bureaucracy of the British administrative apparatus and high politics, as well as political decision-making, as equally absurd and bizarre as they are bleak and frightening in their consequences, and he describes politicians as grotesque figures, as cockroaches transformed into human beings. Politicians of the “metamorphosed radical Cabinet”92 are characterized as a threat to the welfare of the state and the population, without first stating the reasons for this circumstance. Apart from their cockroach identity93  – they are equal to other politicians and the population see themselves threatened by the irrational cockroach conspiracy. In addition, paranoia, power and the struggle for existence – including that of a nation – are highlighted as central motifs in the novel. In McEwan’s novel, cockroaches in human form determine the course of British politics and of the disintegration processes. They fight as Reverialists – who can easily be recognised as a parody of the Brexiteers – against the Clockwisers – parodies of the Remainers – and keep the motto of daily politics: “Hard Reversalism was mainstream. Too late to go back!”.94 Ian McEwan sketches a concept of Reversalism in which the laws of economics and the market are inversed,95 nevertheless he exposes British politics as a struggle for economic dominance in the global market alongside America.96 In the second chapter, the author takes to absurdity not only the arguments of Brexiteers and Remainers and the discussions about referendum and the design of the Brexit process, but also the traditions and patterns of political dispute in Parliament and the culture of debate.97 In the third chapter, he takes a look at the consequences of Britain’s disintegration and at the stylization of European countries as enemies of the nation, echoing the idea of a hereditary enmity between  McEwan, Ian: The Cockroach. London: Vintage 2019, p. 47 (eBook).  Ibid., p. 47 ff. 94  Ibid., p. 48. 95  Cf. ibid., p. 52 ff. 96  Ibid., p. 60. 97  Cf. ibid., p. 77 ff. 92 93

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Britain and France: “In a difficult time such as this, the country needed a staunch enemy.”98 He also takes an ironic look at Britain’s relationship with its former colony America. In the fourth chapter, the author touches upon the issues of abuse of power and sexual assault and hence the me-too discourse in politics and the media. He describes the final political manoeuvres before the submission of the ‘Reversalism Bill’. The transformation of the proposed bill into law ‘was, of course, a constitutional scandal, a disgrace’.99 After Reversalism is passed as a law, there follows the transformation – reversal – of the politicians into cockroaches and the final exposure of the political campaign as a cockroach intrigue aimed at weakening humanity. McEwan’s short novel combines different literary genres such as political satire or conspiracy thriller and uses Kafka’s story as a foil. In contrast to Johnson’s ‘more realistic’ novel, for which it is significant that the role models for the characters are identifiable, and which thus plays with the appeal of a mimesis aesthetic, McEwan aims at alienation and artificial exaggeration, even into the grotesque, as he alludes to all levels of meaning of the term ‘Kafka-esque’. As obviously as McEwan, Lucien Young, under the pseudonym Leavis Carroll, also exposes the literary references of Alice in Brexitland, if only through the illustrations: On one hand the illustrations of Alice in Brexitland mimic John Tenniel Lewis’ art style and the characteristics of the drawings of Alice in Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, and on the other hand they refer to caricatures of politicians involved in the Brexit referendum and the subsequent process of disintegration. Young turns away from Carroll’s delight in un-didactic nonsense in favour of a didactic reappraisal, taking Carroll’s motifs and embodiments of the illogical and instrumentalising them in describing phenomena, such as fear of immigrants, a general xenophobia or populist formulas. In doing so, he marks Brexit as absurd. Not only the figurative representation, but also the character names are transparent against the foil of the politics of the day in the referendum period: David Camerabbit leading Alice into the dangerous Brexit hole is easily recognisable as David Cameron, the mutable and passive Corbyn caterpillar speaking in riddles and always evading questions as Jeremy Corbyn, the self-proclaiming mad, malignant, anti-EU, conspiracy theories spreading, xenophobic, traditional gender images grinning cat (‘Cheshire Twat’) as Nigel Farage, the members of the tea party as embodiments of America’s right-wing parties, for example, the rabbit as embodiment of the tea party, the constantly tweeting, self-centred, inconsiderate and rude Trumpty Dumpty as Donald Trump, the immoral twins Tweedleboz as Boris Johnson and the Tweedlegove as Michael Gove, seeking to stab his brother in the back, and the universally unpopular, opportunistic, threatening and simultaneously insecure Queen of Heartlessness as Theresa May. All politicians, of whatever party, Labour or Tory, are painted in equally negative terms and characterised as opportunistic power mongers who put their own interests above the good of the state. They take refuge behind formulaic propaganda slogans without ever engaging in discussion with Alice, the embodiment of the 98 99

 Ibid., p. 86.  Ibid., p. 138.

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citizen seeking explanations and struggling for factual information about the EU and the motivation for calling the referendum. Even the inquisitive Alice, who is always questioning the characters, is not a purely sympathetic figure, for she too is susceptible to propaganda. She illustrates the power of the media and media moguls like Rupert Murdoch on the easily manipulated, uninformed, naive and emotionally reactive citizen, as well as the mechanisms of spreading fake news and directing the sympathies of recipients who are not critical of the media.100 Political satires and parodies such as Alice in Brexitland use canonised literary works that are generally known and respected as a foil to criticise current political events and political decision-makers as well as the media. The references to stylistic and content-related characteristics of the works cited, to generally known motifs and the character personnel allow for concise characterisation and reduced description in order to convey critical arguments.

6 Brexit: The Result and Origin of Migration The parody Alice in Brexitland also addresses the xenophobia that always accompanies discussions about the referendum and the Brexit. The fear of an overwhelming invasion, intensified by the immigration of war refugees, can also be identified as one of the factors in the decision for Brexit: In 2015, immigration became the paramount political issue in Europe […]. The impact of the crisis was felt in the United Kingdom, where wariness towards migrants almost certainly spelled the difference between success and failure for the 2016 Brexit referendum, an exercise in economic masochism that Britons will long regret.101

In Alice in Brexitland, Alice meets a group of animals who call themselves “the General Public”102 and also discuss the impact of immigration on the country’s economy. The hedgehog, who opposes Brexit, points out the positive impact of immigration on national economic growth and finances. He gives some facts to consider, namely that immigration is generally decreasing, immigrants pay in more taxes than is spent on them, and that the recovery of the national economy depends on exports, which is why leading economists would testify that Brexit would reduce GDP by 15 percent.103 The rooster responds to him with an illogical and irrational reference to an alternative set of facts that the Brexiteers are aware of.104 Alice interrupts the discussion by revealing herself to be a newcomer to the forest and is identified by the Brexiteers among the animals as an illegal immigrant and  Cf. Carroll, Leavis (Lucien Young): Alice in Brexitland. London: Random House UK Ltd 2017, 19 ff, 75 f. (eBook). 101  Albright, Madeleine/Woodward, Bill: Fascism. A Warning. London/New York/Toronto (et al.): HarperCollins 2018, pp. 372 f. (eBook). 102  Young 2017, 28. 103  Ibid., p. 30 f. 104  Cf. ibid., p. 31. 100

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placed under general suspicion.105 To Alice’s comment that she could have died on her journey, the rooster replies, “And it would have served you right! […]. You’re probably a criminal, or worse, a health tourist!”106 When the child, confronted with the suspicion that she is trying to push locals out of the job market, says that she has not yet pursued a job, she is identified as an unemployment benefit recipient. Alice flees society, slogans familiar from the Brexiteers’ election campaign such as ‘Go back where you came from’ or ‘British jobs for British workers’ ringing in her ear.107 The description not only recalls the discussions leading up to the referendum and the Remainers’ and Brexiteers’ election campaigns, but also recalls the xenophobic attacks and assaults that followed the referendum. And the Cheshire Cat, Nigel Farage, also reveals himself to be xenophobic.108 The connection between Brexit and xenophobia is addressed primarily in political satires. In novels and stories that present the image of a society torn apart by the dispute over the Brexit – also in fiction, which focuses primarily on intra-relational dynamics109- or a coexistence of parallel societies whose differences have become apparent as a result of the Brexit, the depiction of the disintegration and displacement of foreigners resembles the experiences that have been described in ‘migration literature’ in recent decades.110 Accordingly, in Fences. A Brexit Diary, Zadie Smith paints a picture of London as a melting pot of cultures and the epitome of the modern, even postmodern, metropolis, whose inhabitants are not immune to xenophobia after all, which is why the Brexit dispute reveals the inhomogeneity of its inhabitants’ worldview. By suggesting that London is “outward-looking city […] so different from these narrow xenophobic places up north”,111 Smith alludes to the traditional motif of a fundamental difference between periphery and centre, rural areas and big city. But then she illustrates the ways in which the Brexit referendum exposes the image of the cosmopolitan city as an illusion, showing the ‘painful truth […] that fences are being raised everywhere in London’,112 revealing the social fault lines that Smith also addresses in novels such as NW or Swing Time, even within the big city.113 Nevertheless, the conflicts and phenomena of xenophobia described in  Cf. ibid., p. 31.  Ibid., p. 31 f. 107  Cf. ibid., p. 32. 108  Cf. ibid., p. 49 ff. 109  The impact of Brexit on relationships is mainly addressed in romance novels circulating on the internet, cf. e.g. Talbot, Carolin Elizabeth: Cloudfänger. Für immer jetzt, tolino media ([email protected]) or Valerie Menton: Leaving Britain ([email protected]). 110  An overview is given, for example, in Ahmad, Dohra (ed.): The Penguin Book of Migration Literature. Departures, Arrivals, Generations, Returns. London/New York/Toronto (et al.): Penguin 2019 (eBook). 111  Smith, Zadie: Fences. A Brexit Diary, in: The New York Review of Books (2016), URL: http:// www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/08/18/fences-brexit-diary/ (last accessed 06.06.2020), o. p. 112  Ibid., n.d. 113  Ali Smith in her novel Autumn also describes the construction of a fence that illustrates the division, splitting and segregation of parts of society as well as a xenophobic gesture, see Smith, Ali 2016a. 105 106

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‘Migration Literature’ are similar before and after Brexit.114 While Brexit has not yet been comprehensively reflected in ‘Immigration Literature’, for example by dedicating an entire novel to the description of phenomena specific to Brexit and post-Brexit Britain, it can be assumed that there will be an influence on the literature of the post-Brexit period, that there will be an impact on literature and writers alike, as one writer suggests, because ‘Brexit means that our national straitjacket  – Englishness, not even Britishness  – becomes much tighter and the value of a migrant’s perspective becomes increasingly discounted and devalued’.115

7 Brexit: Upheaval Instead of Another EU Crisis In this article, a cursory look has shown how multifaceted Brexit is thematised in different genres. By looking at films, series and literature, it becomes clear that currently in the literary genre of the political thriller or political satire and especially in film  – and here above all in documentary film, which has not been taken into account – Brexit not only fuels the debate about crisis phenomena of the EU and the negotiation of functional rationality,116 but above all stimulates reflection “on the capacity of institutions […] to endure and represent conflicts”.117 In summary, most works reflect a pro-European attitude and a positive impression of EU membership; a positive interpretation of Brexit is usually only given space when contrasted with a negative one. Commonly, Brexit is understood as the proliferation of a pan-European rhizome of right-wing politics and worldview that has spread to other non-European countries such as the US. The authors repeatedly state that Brexiteers are characterised by statements that are also made by politicans of right-wing parties in other countries and, in a sense, form a basic consensus of right-wing thought and political speech. Some of the central theses of Brexiteers criticised in the literature and in the film can therefore be summarised as follows: The list of topics reads like a fear scenario of growing confusion – from the fear of ‘population exchange’ through flight movements and immigration in general, to the general suspicion against everything Islamic, to criticism of the ‘gender mania’, as it is called; from the ‘euro’ as a symbol of the loss of national sovereignty to criticism of high finance and the international interconnectedness symbolized therein to general elite criticism; from climate scepticism to criticism of cultural and military ties to the West to general media criticism […]; from the devaluation of traditional family images to the revaluation of deviant life114  Cf. also the description of London and British society in the novel Exit West by Mohsin Hamid; Hamid, Moshin: Exit West. London/New York/Toronto (et al.): Penguin 2019, esp. pp. 126 ff, 132 ff, 142 ff. or 164 ff. (eBook). 115  Cheyette, Bryan: English literature saved my life, in: Robert Eaglestone (ed.): Brexit and Literature. Critical and Cultural Responses. London/New York: Routledge 2018, p. 66–72, here: p. 69 (eBook). 116  Cf. Thiel, Thorsten: Die Krise der Demokratie in Europa – und die Krise der Erforschung dieser Krise, in: Winfried Brömmel, Helmut König, Manfred Sicking (eds.): Europa, wie weiter? Perspektiven eines Projekts in der Krise. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2015, pp.  101–123, here p. 118 (eBook). 117  Ibid., p. 118.

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styles and styles of love. This list is indeed a list whose items capriciously focus on typical modernization issues […].118

Consequently, Brexit is interpreted not only in science but also in literature and film as a consequence of unease with the increasingly complex modern world and as a sign of a disgruntlement with modernity, which is experienced as overtaxing due to its flexibility, richness of facets and countless possibilities of choice and combination. In this sense, Brexit seems to be a sign and result of an ‘syndrome of excessive demands and overtaxing.’119 Moreover, in some works it is interpreted as an attempt to break out of precarious situations120 and to strip away the economic imponderables, above all the uncertainty and unpredictability of living conditions resulting from the abolition of lifelong standardised employment relationships. According to this interpretation, Brexit would be understood as a coping strategy and an attempt to reduce pluralism. Brexit is linked to the hope of a return to a structured, clear, relatively low-conflict world order that promises material security and continuity, similar to the ‘golden age’. As such, media depict the Empire, even in its period of decay in the Victorian and post-Victorian ages before the Second World War. They describe the period at the beginning of the century as one in which – in transfiguring and simplistic retrospect – conservative values, traditional lifestyles, gender relations and family images seemed to prevail – and this in a hierarchically structured, yet upwardly permeable society that provided for a reduced range of ways of shaping one’s life and offered relatively predictable, calculable prospects for the future. If one also takes into account the popularity of media, especially TV series, which thematise clarity and clearly recognisable structures, Brexit can be seen as an attempt to reduce if not abolish the differentiated nature of modernity in many areas of life and dissolve it into a few options – even if this idea can be exposed as wishful thinking in the face of reality with its global interconnections. Since global interconnectedness not only determines culture, as BrexLit reflects, but also the economy, the decision to Brexit and Brexit itself are described not only in literature and film as “an exercise in economic masochism that Britons will long regret. Grumbling about their marriage to the EU and threatening to leave gave the British leverage at the bargaining table; calling their own bluff and filing for divorce has left them with none”.121

References Ahmad, Dohra (Hg.): The Penguin Book of Migration Literature. Departures, Arrivals, Generations, Returns. London/New York/Toronto (u. a.): Penguin 2019 (eBook). Albright, Madeleine/Woodward, Bill: Fascism. A Warning. London/New York/Toronto (u. a.): HarperCollins 2018 (eBook).  Nassehi 2016, S. 5.  Ibid., p. 7. Cf. also Ali Smith 2016a, p. 197. 120  Cf. Marchart, Oliver: Die Prekarisierungsgesellschaft. Prekäre Proteste. Politik und Ökonomie im Zeichen der Prekarisierung. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2013 (eBook). 121  Albright/Woodward 2018, p. 373. 118 119

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Anderson, Benedict: Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism. London/New York: Verso 2006. Becker, Jurek: „Am Strand von Bochum ist allerhand los“. Postkarten, hg. von Christine Becker. Berlin: Suhrkamp 2018 (eBook). Brand, Alexander: Medien Diskurs Weltpolitik. Wie Massenmedien die internationale Politik beeinflussen. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2012 (eBook). Carré, John le: Agent running in the Field. London/New York/Toronto (u. a.): Penguin 2019 (eBook). Carroll, Leavis (Lucien Young): Alice in Brexitland. London: Random House UK Ltd 2017, 19 ff (eBook). Cartwright, Anthony: The Cut. London: Peirene Press 2017. Cheyette, Bryan: English literature saved my life, in: Robert Eaglestone (Hg.): Brexit and Literature. Critical and Cultural Responses. London/New York: Routledge 2018, S. 66–72 (eBook). Cook, Timothy: Governing with the News. The News Media as a Political Institution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press 1998. Dakowska, Dorota/Rowell, Jay: Gibt es einen nationalen Effekt? Zeitlichkeit und historische Erfahrungen bei den Grundeinstellungen zu Europa, in: Daniel Gaxie, Nicolas Hubé, Marine de Lasalle, Jay Rowell (Hg.): Das Europa der Europäer. Über die Wahrnehmung eines politischen Raums, übers. von Franz Weigand und Markus Merz. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2011, S. 137–158 (eBook). Eaglestone, Robert: Introduction. Brexit and literature, in: Ders. (Hg.): Brexit and Literature. Critical and Cultural Responses. London/New York: Routledge 2018, S. 1–6 (eBook). Heer, Sebastian: Politischer Mythos, Legitimität und Ordnungskonstruktion, in: Werner J. Patzelt (Hg.): Die Machbarkeit politischer Ordnung. Transzendenz und Konstruktion. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2013, S. 99–126 (eBook). Jörissen, Benjamin: Beobachtungen der Realität. Die Frage nach der Wirklichkeit im Zeitalter der neuen Medien. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2007 (eBook). Johnson, Stanley: Kompromat. A Brexit Affair. London: Oneworld Publications 2017 (eBook). Jones, Martin/Orford, Scott/Macfarlane, Victoria (Hg.): People, Places and Policy. Knowing contemporary Wales through new localities. London/New York: Routledge 2016. Jordanova, Ludmilla: The Practice of Cultural History in Britain, in: Jörg Rogge (Hg.): Cultural History in Europe. Institutions  – Themes  – Perspectives. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2011, S. 63–78 (eBook). Klose, Joachim: ‚Heimat‘ als gelingende Ordnungskonstruktion, in: Werner J. Patzelt (Hg.): Die Machbarkeit politischer Ordnung. Transzendenz und Konstruktion. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2013, S. 391–416 (eBook). Koller, Veronika/Kopf, Susanne/Miglbauer, Marlene (Hg.): Discourses of Brexit. London/New York: Routledge 2019. König, Helmut: Statt einer Einleitung: Europas Gedächtnis. Sondierungen in einem unübersichtlichen Gelände, in: Helmut König, Julia Schmidt, Manfred Sicking (Hg.): Europas Gedächtnis. Das neue Europa zwischen nationalen Erinnerungen und gemeinsamer Identität. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2008, S. 9–37 (eBook). Leggewie, Claus: Der Mythos des Neuanfangs  – Gründungsetappen der Bundesrepublik Deutschland: 1949 – 1968 – 1989, in: Helmut Berding (Hg.): Mythos und Nation. Studien zur Entwicklung des kollektiven Bewusstseins in der Neuzeit. Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp 1996, S. 275–302. Marchand, Christele/Weill, Pierre Edouard: Die populären Milieus. Wie ‚silent citizens‘ Europa beurteilen, in: Daniel Gaxie, Nicolas Hubé, Marine de Lasalle, Jay Rowell (Hg.): Das Europa der Europäer. Über die Wahrnehmung eines politischen Raums, übers. von Franz Weigand und Markus Merz. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2011, S. 261–284 (eBook). Marchart, Oliver: Die Prekarisierungsgesellschaft. Prekäre Proteste. Politik und Ökonomie im Zeichen der Prekarisierung. Bielefeld: transcript Verlag 2013 (eBook).

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