25 September 2013
Marcel Reich-Ranicki (1920-2013)
Germany’s renowned literary critic, the “Pope of Literature”, Marcel Reich-Ranicki died on 18 September 2013. Reich-Ranicki was an institution in Germany. His programme Literarisches Quartett (“Literary Quartet”) was a fixed point of the weekly schedule on German TV channel ZDF from 1998 until 2001. The programme’s passionate discussions attracted even those otherwise not so interested in literature to the screen to watch. Yet he mainly had built his reputation through newspaper essays, his reviews featured in the “Feuilleton” (culture section) of the heavyweight Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (British Library shelfmark MF522NPL).
Reich-Ranicki was of Polish-Jewish origin and survived the Warsaw Ghetto and the Holocaust. From 1948-49 he worked as a diplomat in the Polish Consulate-General in London; in 1958 he settled in the Federal Republic of Germany. Within a short time he grew to be an established figure in West German literary life and became associated with the literary association “Gruppe 47”.
He wrote more than fifty books, including works on Goethe, Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht. The British Library Catalogue has over a hundred entries for works by him, edited by him, or about him, including Sieben Wegbereiter: Schriftsteller des 20. Jahrhunderts: Arthur Schnitzler, Thomas Mann, Alfred Döblin, Robert Musil, Franz Kafka, Kurt Tucholsky, Bertolt Brecht. (Stuttgart, 2002; YA.2002.a.38364). His autobiography Mein Leben (Stuttgart, 1999; YA.2000.a.4908) was top of the German bestseller list for several years running, and has been translated into English by Ewald Osers as Marcel Reich-Ranicki: the Author of Himself (London 2001; YC.2001.a.21184).
Marcel Reich-Ranicki portrayed in a graffiti mural outside a bookshop in Menden, Germany - a demonstration of his huge public impact and high popular profile. (Image by Mbdortmund from Wikimedia Commons)
Marcel Reich-Ranicki was a friend of literature, freedom and democracy. His death marks the end of an era – not least because it so happens that two of his great contemporaries and friends – Hans Werner Richter, the founder of Gruppe 47, and Walter Jens – also died during the last year.
Dorothea Miehe, Curator German Studies
28 August 2013
Church - Parliament - Monument
As readers of our predecessor blog DACH will know, I have a research interest in the social and political upheavals of 1848 in the German-speaking countries. So a recent trip to Frankfurt am Main had to include a visit to the Paulskirche (St Paul’s Church) where in that year representatives from all over what was then the German Confederation assembled as the first democratically-elected German Parliament to draw up a constitution for a united Germany.
The church was chosen as a venue because of its large size and circular shape: designed so that a preacher could be clearly seen and heard throughout the body of the building, it lent itself well to political speeches and debates.
A session of Parliament in the Paulskirche, 1848 (Picture by Leo von Elliott, from Wikimedia Commons)
As we now know, the work of the Frankfurt Parliament was largely in vain. It successfully drafted a constitution but when in April 1849 the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm IV refused to become constitutional ruler of the planned German state, support for the Parliament – already fragile – began to ebb away. It was finally dissolved two months later and in 1852 the Paulskirche’s Lutheran congregation moved back in and the building returned to its religious function.
Despite its failure at the time, seventy years later the constitution drafted in Frankfurt was to be an important influence on Germany’s 1919 Weimar Constitution. During the years of the Weimar Republic, the Paulskirche began to take on a powerful symbolic role for democrats – somewhat to the dismay of its clergy, whose views tended more towards conservative nationalism. Nonetheless the church hosted annual commemorations of the new constitution and a celebration to mark the 75th anniversary of the Parliament in 1923.
After the Second World War the Paulskirche was an empty shell, seriously damaged but not completely destroyed by bombing in 1944. When the new West German Federal Republic (which also modelled its constitution in part on that devised by the Frankfurt Parliament) was looking for new national symbols of a democratic tradition, the Paulskirche was an obvious choice. A decision was made early on not to restore it as a church but to turn it into a secular monument, the ‘cradle of German democracy’.
Today the centre of the building is taken up by a large and rather austere hall used for civic and national events. Perhaps the best known of these is the annual award of the Peace Prize of the German Book trade. Another regular award ceremony is that of the Goethe-Prize, named for Frankfurt’s most famous son and awarded on the anniversary of his birth, 28 August – although there will be no ceremony today as the prize is only given every three years and the next award will be in 2014.
The central assembly hall in today's Paulskirche (Picture by Blueknow from Wikimedia Commons)
Around the outside of the central hall is an exhibition telling the story of the church and the Frankfurt Parliament. This also looks a bit austere and rather wordy at first glance, but is fascinating and well worth spending time on if you’re visiting Frankfurt. On the outside of the building are various memorials to historical figures who embody German and international democratic traditions, and a striking monument to the victims of Nazi concentration camps.
The Paulskirche today (photo by Susan Reed)
The conservative clergy of the Weimar period might be shocked to see their church today, but I like to think that the men who assembled in 1848 to try and create a democratic, united Germany would be delighted.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies
References:
Stenographischer Bericht über die Verhandlungen der deutschen constituirenden Nationalversammlung zu Frankfurt am Main (Leipzig, 1848-1850). 9335.l.12
Verfassung des deutschen Reiches, einschliesslich der Grundrechte und der Reichswahlordnung. (Karlsruhe, 1849). RB.23.a.28060
Von der Barfüsserkirche zur Paulskirche : Beiträge zur Frankfurter Stadt- und Kirchengeschichte, herausgegeben von Roman Fischer (Frankfurt am Main, 2000). YA.2002.a.7395
19 August 2013
Second World War Soviet Propaganda
Eighteen envelopes full of World War II Soviet propaganda material, containing about 350 items, including leaflets, newspapers and flyers are held in the Official Publications collection at the British Library (S.N.6/11.(2.)) and were accessioned by the British Museum on 31 August 1955. A short typewritten note in Russian, signed by one IU.Okov and addressed to a Mr Barman survives as part of the collection: “Dear Mr Barman, please find enclosed several of our leaflets in German and Hungarian. Yours sincerely, IU. Okov”.
In the same envelope is a typewritten list of items, probably enclosed with the same letter. The letter is dated January 1945 and was sent by the Soviet Office of Propaganda, presumably to some British counterpart. However, as the collection contains more items in other languages, including Finnish, Polish and Romanian, it is very likely that this correspondence originated on more than one occasion. It would be very interesting to learn more about the provenance of the collection and its whereabouts before it came to the Library. Unfortunately, we don’t have any information on Mr Okov or Mr Barman, but it would be very interesting to learn who they were.
When war with the Nazi Germany broke out on 22 June 1941, the Communist Party of the USSR took a decision to create a new organisation, which was called the Soviet Office of Political and Military Propaganda (later reformed into the Office of Propaganda on Enemy and Occupied Territories). By the end of 1941, eighteen propaganda newspapers were being published in the Soviet Union in various foreign languages, ten of them in German.
Even the German intelligence accepted that the Soviet propaganda was very effective. Propaganda aimed at Nazi soldiers and civilians in Germany and on occupied territories didn’t focus on communist ideology or criticise religion, the class structure of society, etc. The main objective was to condemn Hitler and his National Socialist German Workers Party.
The propaganda materials vividly illustrated atrocities by Nazi troops on the occupied territories on the one hand and the strength of the Soviet Army and consequently its inevitable victory on the other. Among various propaganda techniques one of the most important was an emotional appeal to ‘common’ people who were forced to fight a war that was not in their interests. Images of women and children waiting for their husbands, sons and fathers back at home were widely used. Women and children in these pictures appeared miserable and ashamed that their loved ones were fighting on the Eastern front, and these impressions came out as genuinely poignant and moving.
Most of the flyers contain a pass written in German and Russian that could be torn off and presented to the Soviet troops when surrendering. In 1942, after the first German defeats, a special series of propaganda materials demonstrating the enemy's losses was launched. The propaganda message addressed to Germany's allies stressed the argument that the German fascists were using their allies' troops in the most dangerous situations and campaigns.
Several items from this collection can be seen in the current BL exhibition 'Propaganda: Power and Persuasion' which is on till 17 September 2013.
Katya Rogatchevskaia, Lead Curator Russian Studies
16 August 2013
German propaganda in Esperanto
Memories take me back to the USSR: in 1973, while reading a biography of famous Esperantist Vasili Eroshenko by the Ukrainian writer Nadia Andrianova, I admired the vivid description of his journey to England in 1912. A newly-wed couple, Margaret and Paul Blaise, waited for this courageous blind traveller from Moscow at the Charing Cross station. As Eroshenko wrote later, the ten days that he stayed with this international (Welsh-Belgian) family were “the happiest days” in England. Years later, after exploring the streets of London that Eroshenko walked in 1912, I found books and pamphlets by Margaret Lawrence Blaise (1878 -1935) in the British Library, as well as her photograph in one of them.
The kind hostess of Eroshenko was not just the charming wife of Paul Blaise, secretary of the Belgian Chamber of Commerce in London, whom she met via their mutual interest in Esperanto. At the time of her marriage to him in 1910 she herself was an established teacher of Esperanto and already had a popular book The Esperanto Manual: A complete guide to Esperanto in the form of twenty-five lectures specially adapted to the requirements of pupils in evening classes (London, 1908) [012902.ee.53] under her belt (published under her maiden name of Jones). Various editions of this manual are a part of our collections.
Margaret Lawrence Blaise in 1913
She was also a passionate propagandist for the new language, created only a few decades previously. No wonder that when the First World War started Margaret Blaise continued to plead for its use in international communications. In the spirit of the time (with many books and pamphlets titled “Why I am…” or “Why not…”) she produced a pamphlet entitled A World Language: Why not Esperanto? The British Library holds the seventh edition of this pamphlet, reprinted in June 1916 (01902.l.33.).The sharp eyes of Margaret Blaise noticed the use of Esperanto by Germans in a way which was previously unthinkable for idealists: for state propaganda. The British Library’s current exhibition “Propaganda: Power and Persuasion” looks at many aspects of the use of language for the aims of propaganda. It pays attention to the use of established state languages in wartime. But what about auxiliary or so-called “invented languages”? In one chapter of the pamphlet called “German Propaganda”, Margaret Blaise summarises the use of Esperanto by the German authorities. She mentions an official German publication, La vero pri la Milito (The Truth about the War), which presents ideas “from the German point of view”. “They issued a pamphlet with the above title, sending out thousands and thousands of copies”, she notes. The British Library holds one of the surviving copies (08027.dd.12) as well as other German publications from this period.
It seems that Germany was the only country to use Esperanto for propaganda purposes during the First World War.
In later decades it was used in other countries. The “Little Red Book” by Mao Zedong (exhibited in “Propaganda Power and Persuasion”) exists in an Esperanto version too (P.2011.a.378). The most richly illustrated Esperanto journal, El Popola Ĉinio (ZF.9.a.6337), published in paper form from 1950-2000 by the Chinese Esperanto-League, dedicated a whole issue to the death of “La Granda Gvidanto kaj Instruisto Prezidanto Maŭ Zedong” in 1976 (pictured below).
Languages are created by people and for people. It seems that not a single one of them can escape the temptations of state propaganda.
Olga Kerziouk, Curator Esperanto Studies.
Further reading:
Eco, Umberto. The search for the perfect language. (Oxford, 1995). 95/25870
Lins, Ulrich. La danĝera lingvo: studo pri la persekutoj kontraǔ Esperanto. (Moskvo, 1990). YF.2007.a.27179
01 July 2013
German Studies Library Group
The German Studies Library Group (GSLG) is a forum for information about German Studies in libraries throughout the UK, and beyond. Are you a librarian working with German Studies collections, or simply interested in German Studies? Would-be members are warmly encouraged to join via the membership page on our website.
To give you a flavour of our activities: our Annual General Meeting takes place on Friday 5 July, on this occasion at the Goethe-Institut in London. It involves an afternoon programme beginning with refreshments and including a tour and talk about the Institute as well as a guest lecture on German musicians in Victorian Britain from Dr Stefan Manz, Head of German in the School of Languages and Social Sciences, Aston University – and, like me, a German who has lived and worked in the UK for quite a number of years.
In 2011, the Group celebrated its silver anniversary, and since its inception, it has always included representatives from the British Library. Outreach and networking are important aspects of any British Library curator’s role, and groups such as the GSLG enable exchanges of ideas and best practice among curators and librarians alike, across the country, working at a variety of research, university, and other libraries and institutions. The British Library’s German Studies collections constitute a fabulously rich resource, and the GSLG also provides the British Library, and members from other institutions, a welcome opportunity to promote the value and possibilities of significant German-language collections to as wide an audience as possible.
In recent years, the GSLG has organised two conferences in Germany, at Göttingen and Halle where we were guests of the University Libraries in both cities as well as visiting other major German libraries such as those in Erfurt, Gotha, Leipzig, Hildesheim and Wolfenbüttel.
The GSLG also publishes its own Newsletter (held by the British Library at shelfmark ZK.9.b.1089), circulated free of charge to all GSLG members. We welcome articles and news stories both from our members and from writers beyond our membership. If you have an idea for an article you would like to contribute, or news you would like to share with readers interested in German Studies collections in the UK and further afield, please contact the Newsletter’s editor: [email protected].
Dorothea Miehe, Curator German Studies
05 June 2013
Propaganda in the schoolroom
One of the exhibits in The British Library’s current exhibition ‘Propaganda: Power and Persuasion’ is a school textbook, opened to show one of the nastiest maths problems ever posed: how much does it cost to care for the ‘hereditarily unfit’ in terms of a ‘normal’ worker’s annual salary? The book was published in Germany in 1941, and its young readers were effectively asked to put a value on human lives and encouraged to see one kind of life as more valid than another. Other calculations in the book involve the proportion of German territory lost in 1918, the falling percentage of Jews in the German population since 1933 and the comparative sizes of the British and German navies.
'Was Kostet die Betreuung Erbkranker', from Rechenbuch für Volksschulen. Gaue Westfalen-Nord u. Süd. Ausgabe B. Heft V – 7. und 8. Schuljahr. (Leipzig, [1941]). British Library YA.1998.a.8646
Maths might seem an unlikely field for spreading propaganda messages, but the Nazi regime could press almost any school subject into the service of its propaganda machine. Hitler made no secret of his desire for children to ‘learn nothing else but to think as Germans and to act as Germans’, and the schoolbooks published under his rule promoted the Nazi mindset in many different ways.
An obsession with race and eugenics was a major part of this mindset, promoted in biology textbooks with long sections on ‘racial studies’. But two biology textbooks in our collections also show more subtle use of propaganda. One is intended for use in girls’ schools and contains information on food and nutrition and on choosing a healthy partner; its cover shows a woman in a blossoming orchard, surrounded by blond children. Woman’s role is to nurture, to feed – and to breed. In contrast the textbook for boys’ schools is more technical and its cover features a powerful woodcut of a muscular ploughman, hair blowing in the wind. Man’s role is to fight the elements and tame the soil.
Biology for girls and boys: Graf, J. Biologie für höhere Schulen. Bd. 4. Ausgabe für Mädchenschulen. (München, 1943). YA.1994.a.15364, and Meyer, E. Lebenskunde: Lehrbuch der Biologie für höhere Schulen. Bd. 3 (5. Klasse). (Erfurt, 1942). 7006.v.17
The boys’ textbook uses the term ‘Lebenskunde’ instead of ‘Biologie’, and this preference for more ‘Germanic’ terminology developed throughout the period: a geography textbook which originally had the ‘does-what-is-says-on-the-tin’ title Lehrbuch der Wirtschaftsgeographie became in its 1940 edition Volk – Raum – Wirtschaft (British Library: 10004.ppp.44.)
Geography of course offered further opportunities to hammer home to children the losses to German territory following the ‘diktat of Versailles’. History too was a fertile field for the propagandist, focusing on the heroes and triumphs of the German past. One history textbook describes the boy Hitler reading about the ancient Germans and lamenting that his native Austria was no longer part of a great German empire. Another includes an ‘appendix of enemies and traitors’, from Segestes, the betrayer of Arminius, to the Weimar Republic politician Walter Rathenau.
It’s hard to know how much influence this kind of textbook propaganda had on the children of Hitler’s Germany, but a generation grew up with these books and the teaching that went with them. Few if any can have remained completely untouched, and the post-war world must have given them much to un-learn and reconsider.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator Germanic Studies
22 May 2013
Opera crimes
Today is the 200th anniversary of Richard Wagner’s birth. Our Music Blog is marking this with news of a digitisation project, but I make no excuse for blogging on the same topic on the same day. After all the many items in the media last week have not only covered Wagner's music but also his cultural, political and literary influence. On 8-9 June the British Library will be hosting a "Wagner Weekend" featuring a seminar on Wagner as a writer and a dramatic reading of his tetralogy Der Ring des Nibelungen - both events with a literary rather than musical focus. Few other composers’ work would be examined (or performed) in this way!
In fact, there are few aspects of Wagner’s work which have gone unexplored over the years. One particularly strange little corner of Wagner studies is the legal analysis of the Ring Cycle. The writer Paul Lindau, in a review of the first Bayreuth Festival in 1876 [BL: 11794.c.17.], was perhaps the first to mention how many criminal offences are committed in the work, ranging from petty (unauthorised bathing by the Rhinemaidens) to severe (various murders).
Lindau had his tongue firmly in his cheek, but some writers have taken a more serious look at the legal side of the Ring Cycle. After all, the plot of Das Rheingold turns on a theft and a breach of contract, while oath-breaking and perjury loom large in Götterdämmerung. As critics from Bernard Shaw onwards have recognised, Wagner was concerned in the Ring with power and its abuses, and the making, breaking and defying of laws form part of that theme. So trying to establish, to use the title of one essay, “Whose Gold? Whose Ring? Whose Helmet?” can be more than a mere parlour game for bored lawyers when analysing the complex political and moral world of the tetralogy.
Still, it’s the parlour game aspect that really catches the imagination, and its finest flowering is a work entitled Richard Wagners 'Ring des Nibelungen' im Lichte des deutschen Strafrechts (Richard Wagner’s 'Ring of the Nibelung' in the Light of German Criminal Law) [BL: YA.1994.a.10378]. Allegedly written in the 1930s by Ernst von Pidde, a provincial lawyer sacked by the Nazis for writing anti-Wagner polemics, this is in fact an anonymous spoof, first published in 1968 and occasionally reissued with updates taking into account changes in German law.
“Pidde” painstakingly analyses text (and sometimes music) to establish, for example, whether the hero Siegfried’s killing of giant-turned-dragon Fafner should be classed as homicide or cruelty to animals. At the end of the book he lists the relevant punishments for the guilty characters: I’ve always thought it unfair that the goddess Fricka gets life for incitement to murder while her husband Wotan, as accessory to the same murder (and killer, thief and arsonist), could be out in five years!
But for a truly obscure crime, we have to go back to Lindau. At the end of Götterdämmerung, Brünnhilde rides her horse into Siegfried’s funeral pyre, and is thus guilty of “burning the carcase of an animal in close proximity to inhabited buildings”. As they might have said on The Sweeney, “Get yer breastplate on, you’re nicked!”.
Susan Reed, Lead Curator, Germanic Studies
Brünnhilde rides into Siegfried's funeral pyre: technically illegal.
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