The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature

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The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature

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THE FEMINIST ENCYCLOPEDIA OF GERMAN LITERATURE Edited by FRIEDERIKE EIGLER and SUSANNE KORD

GREENWOOD PRESS Westport, Connecticut • London

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The feminist encyclopedia of German literature / edited by Friederike Eigler and Susanne Kord. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-313-29313-9 (alk. paper) 1. German literature—Women authors—Dictionaries. 2. German literature—Dictionaries. 3. Women authors—Germany—Biography— Dictionaries. 4. Feminism and literature—Dictionaries. I. Eigler, Friederike Ursula. II. Kord, Susanne. PT41.F46 1997 830.9'9287'03—dc20 96-18204 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available. Copyright © 1997 by Friederike Eigler and Susanne Kord All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, by any process or technique, without the express written consent of the publisher. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 96-18204 ISBN: 0-313-29313-9 First published in 1997 Greenwood Press, 88 Post Road West, Westport, CT 06881 An imprint of Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc. Printed in the United States of America

The paper used in this book complies with the Permanent Paper Standard issued by the National Information Standards Organization (Z39.48-1984). 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

CONTENTS Preface

vii

Introduction

ix

THE ENCYCLOPEDIA

1

Appendix of Names

587

Index

637

Contributors

673

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PREFACE The Feminist Encyclopedia of German Literature is the result of a truly collaborative effort that involved 2 editors, 3 research assistants, and more than 100 contributors. Many scholars not only wrote entries for the volume but also helped to shape it by suggesting additional entries. We have benefited enormously from their expertise, and we feel privileged that we as editors were in a position to consolidate the wealth of existing feminist research in this volume. In conceptualizing the scope, content, and organization of The Feminist Encyclopedia, we sought to respond to the ongoing transition of the discipline Germanistik to the more broadly conceived field of German studies: in addition to entries that focus on aspects of literary history, literary practice, and theory, we have included many entries that draw on related disciplines such as film studies, history, music, fine arts, cultural anthropology, psychology, sociology, and political science, as well as entries that either discuss or utilize interdisciplinary approaches (e.g., Cultural Studies, Postcolonialism, Trivial Literature, and Vampirism). In the process of selecting the actual list of entry headings, we also consulted existing reference works in the fields of literary studies and women's studies. Contributors were initially recruited at the 1993 Women in German convention and through the Women in German Newsletter (Fall 1993). We also wrote to a large number of experts in the fields of German literature, film, and women's studies and requested further recommendations for contributors and/or entry headings. The result was a vast group of contributing scholars who represent various approaches and methodologies. In the editing process, we have aimed at establishing a relative coherence that we deemed essential for a reference

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work of this nature, while keeping the individual style and character of each entry intact. We would like to thank our research assistants, Sara Colglazier and Astrid Weigert, whose indefatigable energy and considerable editorial talents were absolutely essential for the timely and successful completion of The Feminist Encyclopedia. Sara Colglazier helped us to coordinate our massive mailings and subsequent correspondence with contributors and was an invaluable assistant editor for the project. Astrid Weigert was responsible for assembling the entire volume on diskette, implemented editorial changes, and checked names, dates, and bibliographical references. During the course of this project, our appreciation for both of them as junior scholars and assistant editors has grown by leaps and bounds: both Sara Colglazier and Astrid Weigert represent the best of good research, which includes both intellectual acumen and a willingness to do the gritty background research. In the final phase of the editing process, we were fortunate to obtain the assistance of another gifted young scholar and research assistant, Eva Szalay, who helped us to organize the last mass mailing and assisted in proofreading the entire volume. Thanks are also due our husbands, James M. Harding and John F. Landau, for their continued patience and their interest in the project. We are grateful to the Department of German at Georgetown University, which supported this project by providing the funds for our research assistants and office resources.

INTRODUCTION Today, a multiplicity of feminist approaches has become an integral part of the fields of German literary and cultural studies. Yet, to date, no comprehensive reference work exists that records the results of a wealth of feminist scholarship conducted over the past 25 years. The Feminist Encyclopedia aims at filling that gap by providing concise information on more than 500 topics for both the newcomer to the field and the more experienced student or scholar. In contrast to many existing reference books that focus exclusively on women authors, The Feminist Encyclopedia adopts a topic-oriented approach similar to standard reference works such as Gero von Wilpert's Sachworterbuch der Literatur (seventh edition, 1989). Topics include literary periods, epochs and genres, critical approaches and theories, major authors and works, female stereotypes, laws and historical developments, literary concepts and themes, and organizations and archives relevant to women and women's studies. The creation of a feminist counterpart to standard reference works naturally raises the question of whether women's issues and feminist criticism are not, in so doing, relegated to a place separate from mainstream literary history and studies. While we acknowledge the risks involved in a "separatist" approach, we believe that the need for a feminist encyclopedia exists as long as standard literary histories and reference works continue to ignore or marginalize women's contributions to German literary history, and as long as gender is not considered an integral part of literary criticism. In other words, we need a feminist encyclopedia as long as, for example, von Wilpert's standard reference work lumps together all women authors from the Middle Ages to the present under the heading Frauenliteratur on one and a half short pages, and it does not include

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an entry on Feminismus but instead includes an entry entitled Femininus, which is translated as weiblich and includes a cross-reference to weiblicher Reim. Most entries in this book focus on women's contributions to literature, film, culture, and history and on the historical conditions that simultaneously enabled these contributions and marginalized them. References to important male authors, filmmakers, and historical figures or their works are made if they provide the necessary background for assessing women's contributions. We have included entries on film and film theories in general and on important feminist filmmakers in particular, since film studies have become an integral part of German studies. Furthermore, methodologies and theories that have been developed within film studies inform some approaches to literary criticism. Despite the fact that our current system of literary periodization is woefully inadequate when applied to women authors, we have retained many categorizations that have traditionally been used to describe the literary canon (Classicism, Naturalism, etc.) and added others that are of obvious relevance to women specifically (e.g., Salonism). Despite the inadequacy of the current system of periodization, we refer to these established categories as points of reference and departure. We need them as points of reference because in the absence of a woman-centered literary history, these categories enable us to discuss women's literature and culture in a differentiating manner—beyond the lump sum of "Frauen-" or "Trivialliteratur." We need them as points of departure because in many cases, the literature described under these headings does not fit the heading: Naturalism, Classicism or Expressionism for women may not be identical, in some cases not even similar, to male-centered traditions perpetuated under the same headings. These misnomers are a constant reminder of the need to redefine periodizations and the canonical criteria upon which they rest. We understand this process of rethinking the canon as the larger project of which this book is a small part. We have included relatively few separate entries on women authors (authors represented in separate entries appear in boldface in the Appendix of Names) and even fewer for specific works. Partly, we were motivated by the fact that most feminist handbooks on German literature are author-centered: examples are the excellent biobibliographical works by Gisela Brinker-Gabler, Karola Ludwig and Angela Woffen (Lexikon deutschsprachiger Schriftstellerinnen 1800-1945, 1986), Elke Frederiksen (Women Writers of Germany, Austria and Switzerland, 1989, and her recent Women Writers in German Speaking Countries, 1996, coedited with Elisabeth Ametsbichler), and Elisabeth Friedrichs (Die deutschsprachigen Schriftstellerinnen des 18. und 19. Jahrhunderts, 1981). Many other anthologies of works by women, such as Brinker-Gabler's Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (1978), include biographical information on the authors. All of these works are indispensable predecessors of this one, and in most cases, this handbook would be most productively used in conjunction with a biobibliographical work.

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The Feminist Encyclopedia focuses less on the lives of the authors, filmmakers, and other major cultural figures and more on their works and their position within literary history. Authors are listed in the Appendix of Names with their dates and a reference to all entries in which they appear. Users who are interested in particular authors should refer to this Appendix of Names. The authors and filmmakers who appear in separate entries were selected because they either had made significant contributions to women's history or feminist thought and are sometimes not represented in other biobibliographical works (e.g., Libuse Monfkova and the relatively large number of filmmakers included in this volume) or had made significant contributions and were, in our opinion, not adequately represented in period-focused entries in this work (e.g., Anna Owena Hoyers). In some cases we have found it necessary, for the convenience of the user, to include separate entries on authors whom many would consider standard, great, or important women writers—authors who, because of their comparative prominence, are already included in most biobibliographical works on women. The reason why we included them here as well is that they appear in so many entries (e.g., Bettina von Arnim or Ingeborg Bachmann) that it seemed fairer to the user to provide a brief biography and general assessment of their works in this volume, rather than referring the user to biobibliographical works. No valuation of these authors over all others represented in this volume was intended or should be inferred. Nonetheless, we are aware that, as any selection process inevitably does, ours, too, has resulted in exclusions and marginalizations, which we hope will be amended in future editions of this work or in the works of others. To define our approach and this project as feminist is to raise, once again, the question of definitions. Increasingly, feminist scholarship is posited not in isolation but in conjunction with issues of race, ethnicity, class, religion, age, and sexuality, among others. In view of the ongoing debate about feminism in its various meanings and manifestations, we decided against providing a blanket definition of the term to our contributors when we conceptualized this volume. We believe that The Feminist Encyclopedia will be more valuable as a work that reflects the different feminisms that emerge from contributors' diverse approaches. That there is no single, definitive feminism is reflected in the entries both implicitly, in the way the various topics are approached, and explicitly, in the many entries on issues of literary theory and criticism. Beyond these diverse feminist approaches, common denominators of most, if not all, entries are their Frauenzentriertheit, the assumption that women have made tremendous contributions to our culture that have generally been overlooked or ignored, and their investigation of how women were affected by this exclusion and whether/how they participated in, or condoned, it. For instance, the Encyclopedia not only explores contributions by women authors but also reassesses traditional views of women and femininity in literary history. Entries on female stereotypes or literary themes, for example, generally concern themselves with constructions

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of women/Woman by male authors and the question of how they were rewritten, challenged, or embraced by women writers. We used English terms for entry headings (Inquisition instead of Hexenverfolgung) unless the German term is untranslatable (Schundliteratur, as opposed to Trivial Literature) or the German term is an established concept, but the English translation is not (Grofistadtroman instead of Urban Novel). Whenever the German term has been exported into English, we have used the English but cross-referenced the German in cases where misunderstandings could arise (Young Germany [main entry]; Junges Deutschland [cross-reference]). In the alphabetization of entries, we have followed the English-language custom of ignoring umlauts (e.g., Horspiel is alphabetized as Horspiel, as opposed to the German custom of treating umlauts as an added e in alphabetization). Each entry is followed by a brief bibliography of secondary works and cross-references pointing the user to related entries. Since The Feminist Encyclopedia covers the entire discipline of German Studies, we decided against the inclusion of a general bibliography which inevitably would have resulted in a small and arbitrary selection from a vast and diverse body of feminist research related to German studies. We advise the reader who is interested in some basic bibliographical information to consult the bibliographies following some of the more generally conceived entries. In addition to the entries on major literary periods (e.g., Classicism, Enlightenment, Medieval Literature, Romanticism), the following entries are some examples for contributions that contain general (bibliographical) information about the state of feminist criticism and feminist theories: Aesthetics, feminine/feminist; Authorship; Essentialism/Constructionism; Feminist Theory, British/French/German/U.S.; Film Theory; Gender Theories, History of; and Lesbian Theories. The Appendix of Names lists all entries which discuss or mention particular authors (e.g., Ozakin, Aysel, 1942-present: Body, Female; Hybridity; Turkish German Literature). The Appendix of Names thus serves as an overview of the subject matters within which a particular person is discussed and assists the reader in selecting the entries most pertinent to her/his interests. The Index lists page references only. In cases where the author's pseudonym could be mistaken for her actual name, we have included the author's pseudonym in the Appendix of Names. For instance, Elisabeth duck's pseudonym is included in the index (Betty Paoli), whereas Karoline von Gunderrode's (Tian) is not. In cases where the author has been canonized under her pseudonym to such an extent that she is less known under her given name, we have, for the user's convenience, created the main entry under that name (e.g., Anna Seghers) but also included the author's given name in the Appendix of Names (e.g., Reiling, Netty: See Anna Seghers). Dates for all persons listed are provided in this Appendix of Names. We have asked our contributors to avoid noninclusive language, including the infamous generic masculine ("the reader/he") and all generalizations that assume a masculine norm ("mankind"). Where the user encounters such gen-

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eralizations (e.g., "Englishmen"), she or he should assume that men only are indicated. To include women explicitly in our speech instead of implying their presence in the generic male is, in our opinion, an indication of our ability and willingness to acknowledge women's specific contributions to human history and culture. Friederike Eigler Susanne Kord

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A A b e n t e u e r r o m a n . This is a literary term for novels in which a suspenseful plot predominates. The protagonist lives through a series of adventures during the course of an imposed or self-imposed journey. The events do not describe a developmental process but seem to follow each other coincidentally. During the Middle Ages, the genre can mainly be found in translations of French Arthurian epics, for example, in Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbriicken's Huge Scheppel (c.1450) and Eleonore von Osterreich's Pontus und Sidonia (c.1450). After the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648), many characteristics of the Abenteuerroman were incorporated in the picaresque novel. These novels combined medieval ideals of court culture with adventurism, eroticism, and phantasmal elements. Many women coauthored such novels, usually anonymously. Sibylle Ursula von Braunschweig-Liineburg and her brother Anton Ulrich wrote the completely original fragment Aramena in five volumes (1669-1673). A genuine interest in ethnography and a passion for adventurism resulted from the discoveries of new continents and Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1717). Travel literature and Robinsonaden became popular during the 18th century. Women authors contributed to this new genre, such as Sophie von La Roche's Tagebuch einer Reise durch die Schweiz (1787) and Johanna Schopenhauer's Reise durch England und Schottland (1800, printed in 1818). These travelogues characterize women's attempts to break out of their roles by educating themselves through traveling and by chronicling their experiences. Sophie von La Roche's famous novel Geschichte des Frduleins von Sternheim (1771) became

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the forerunner of a female tradition of the novel during the late 18th and 19th centuries. During the 19th and 20th centuries, authors of travelogues frequently focused on social, political, and cultural issues. Examples of this kind of critical Abenteuerroman are Ida Pfeiffer's descriptions of her long and hazardous journeys around the world, among them Fine Frauenfahrt um die Welt (3 vols., 1850), Frieda von Billow's look at German colonial life in Reiseskizzen und Tagebuchblatter aus Deutsch-Ostafrika (1889), and Ida Hahn-Hahn's Orientalische Briefe (1844). Some authors combined their critique with futuristic or Utopian visions, as did La Roche at the end of Sternheim and Hahn-Hahn in her search for lost female places in Orientalische Briefe. This recurs in the 20th century in Christa Wolf's Kassandra (1983) and Irmtraud Morgner's Amanda: Ein Hexenroman (1983). Many 20th-century Abenteuerromane incorporate specific historical and political events, for example, Adrienne Thomas's famous anti-war novel Die Katrin wird Soldat (1930). See also: La Roche, Sophie von; Morgner, Irmtraud; Picaresque Novel; Robinsonade; Travelogues; Wolf, Christa. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur Mundigkeit: Frauen und Literatur in Deutschland von 1500 bis 1800 (Munich: DTV, 1989); Brinker-Gabler, Gisela, ed., Deutsche Literatur von Frauen, 2 vols. (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1988); Frederiksen, Elke, "Der Blick in die Feme." Frauen Literatur Geschichte: Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Hiltrud Gniig and Renate Mohrmann (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985) 104-22.

KATRINKOMM Abortion. After German unification in 1990, the radically differing abortion laws in the two former Germanies needed to be reconciled as part of the Einigungsvertrag (Treaty of Unification). When the East and West could not agree, the Bundestag hastily ordered that the final decision on a common abortion legislation be postponed until December 1992. In the meantime, the old laws continued to apply in the respective parts of the new Germany: whereas in the former East Germany women were entitled to abortions in the first three months of pregnancy, West German laws permitted abortions only under special circumstances and only in the first three months. After a five-year quarrel between the Bundestag and the Constitutional Court, in which the former's decisions were overruled on grounds of violating the constitutional provision to protect human life (May 1993), new abortion legislation was finally passed in July 1995. In effect, the new law declares that in cases of rape or threat to the mother's health, abortion is legal in the first 12 weeks of pregnancy provided the woman undergoes a psychological consultation with the goal of saving the unborn life. When women cannot afford to pay for abortions, health insurance plans cover them. This legislation was heavily criticized by leading women politicians of

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3

the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), who asserted that women from the East were the real losers of the unification. The latest amendment to section 218 of the Penal Code of the Federal Republic of Germany reflects the ongoing legal debate that started when a uniform law prohibiting abortion was first enacted with the founding of the German Reich in 1871. However, in addition to the legal debate, which dominates the discourse on abortion in Germany, medical, religious, and social factors also contribute to the debate. Scientific and technological progress in the development of new abortion practices, as well as the dissemination of these findings, has significantly shaped the discourse of abortion. Abortion has been condemned by Christianity for centuries. Under its influence, a general antiabortion law was first introduced in the Middle Ages and, later, strictly enforced under the new criminal law of Karl V (1532). However, women and men of all times have undermined these strict abortion laws. As early as the 12th century, German abbess Hildegard von Bingen included in her medical writings certain remedies and techniques for inducing abortion. Efforts to resist the legal prosecution of abortions directly became more organized and focused during the first women's movement (1848-1923) and after the uniform law of 1871. Women's organizations and groups, as well as individual women, began to use their increasing political power to raise the issue at public meetings. The first intellectual campaign against section 218 was launched toward the end of the Weimar Republic with articles and poems by Bertolt Brecht, Erich Kastner, and Kurt Tucholsky and with performances of the plays Frau Emma kampft im Hinterland (1928) by Use Langner, §218: Gequalte Menschen (1926) by Carl Crede, and Cyankali (1929) by Friedrich Wolf in Berlin. All three plays depict abortion mainly as a social-class problem affecting working-class women who lack the financial means to raise another child and thus see themselves forced to abort the fetus when they become pregnant. These three plays generated tremendous publicity and contributed to the widespread social support for legalizing abortion. Little became of this support, however, because the political climate after 1930 gave way to very conservative family politics in which childbearing was one of the central duties of women. In Nazi Germany, abortions of so-called Aryan babies were strictly forbidden, although abortion was often forced upon pregnant women of interracial relationships. Thus, abortion laws became not only a means to control women but also a powerful tool with which to manipulate racial and population politics. After the war and in the aftermath of the students' revolt in the late 1960s, another strong movement to legalize abortion culminated in 1971, when 374 well-known German women publicly announced they had had abortions. Modeled after a similar campaign in France, Alice Schwarzer arranged to have pictures of these women appear on the cover of the mainstream German magazine Stern. This maneuver reopened the public debate on abortion after World War II. The political influence of the late 1960s and early 1970s also shaped the literary climate in Germany; in accordance with the powerful proclamation

T that "the personal is the political," women writers thematized female identity and women's experiences in relationships, expressing their desire and sexuality. This move toward subjectivity and introspection also allowed women writers to represent their experiences with abortion, including its physical and psychological impact. Novels such as Ingeborg Bachmann's Der Fall Franza (1979) and Judith Jannberg's Ich bin ich (1982) depict abortion as male control over the female body. A very different kind of experience is represented by German writer Karin Struck in her novel Blaubarts Schatten (1991), in which she focuses on the psychological and moral impact of an abortion. Composed as an experiential text, the author describes a woman's devastating feelings of guilt after an abortion. One year later Struck published an essay anthology entitled Ich sehe mein Kind im Traum (1992), in which she explains her antiabortion attitude as a result of her own experiences and promotes antiabortion action. Arguing from a religious and conservative point of view, Karin Struck is one of the most outspoken female writers who openly oppose abortion. See also: Bachmann, Ingeborg; Body, Female; National Socialism; Struck, Karin; Subjectivity; Unification, German; Weimar Republic; Wende, Die; Women's Movement. References: Clements, Elizabeth, "The Abortion Debate in Unified Germany." Women and the Wende: Social Effects and Cultural Reflections of the GermanT Unification Process. Ed. Elizabeth Boa and Janet Wharton (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1994) 38-52. Grossman, Attina, Reforming Sex: The German Movement for Birth Control and Abortion Reform, 1920-1950 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995); Jiitte, Robert, Geschichte der Abtreibung (Munich: Beck, 1993). FRIEDERIKE B. EMONDS A c t r e s s . The actress is a relatively recent phenomenon in Germany, where female roles were played by men into the 18th century. Nonetheless, the barriers blocking a woman's access to the theater professions were lowered much earlier because the low social standing of actors made patriarchal obstacles superfluous. The stage often held out the only promise of an intellectually rewarding career in which a woman could work beside men as their equal, but by strictly limiting the range of roles she could play, bourgeois sexual hypocrisy served to reinforce gender stereotypes. Even as actors began to gain in professional stature, freeing themselves from clerical and aristocratic control, female performers remained acutely vulnerable to associations between acting and prostitution. The artistic accomplishment and biography of real actors have had little influence on their literary portrayal. From Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795) to Theodor Fontane's GrafPetofy (1884), actors have served more as a projection of authors' personal or class ambitions and provided little insight into the real hardships of a stage career as documented in the autobiographies of actresses such as Karoline Schulze-Kummerfeld's Lebenserinnerungen (pub. 1915) or Karoline Bauer's Am Tage Ruhm, am Abend Thranen (n.d.). The cult surrounding, for example, Charlotte Wolter has taken the ex-

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ceptional diva to be the norm, eclipsing the often tedious, demoralizing lives that the vast majority of her sisters led. Until the theater reforms at the turn of this century, a female performer usually had to supply her own wardrobe, requiring a seamstress' improvisational talents and a lavish outlay that her typically meager wages could not provide. Treated by many as "fair game" (cf. Arthur Schnitzler's play Freiwild, 1898), she was employed to represent a bourgeois social ideal on stage and relegated to the demimonde offstage. Her performance was only half over when the curtain fell, for the actress was often obliged to join her director or reviewers for dinner in a chambre separee before retiring to her sewing. An actress' working life typically began in early adolescence and ended around the age of 40, usually in poverty, as her looks began to fade. Even the renowned theater proprietress and reformer Caroline Neuber lost the extended struggle to retain her troupe, living out her last three decades as a destitute nomad. Overworked and prone to illness, an actress could be fired if she married or became pregnant, for the box office appeal of a femme fatale depended on being able to preserve the illusion that she "belonged" not to a single lover but to an anonymous mass of (male) viewers. Whether describing Eleonora Duse or a lesser-known actress, reviewers favored attributes such as "submission, purity of feeling, bewitching allure," emphasizing the essentially "female" and physical stage presence of the actress, thereby glossing over any intellectual achievement. In the mid-19th century, the first generation of professional women writers broke new ground in literature by portraying an actress' real struggles. With the exception of Luise Muhlbach's Zogling der Natur (1842) and Marie von EbnerEschenbach's play Die Schauspielerin (1861), however, these works accommodate narrative conventions by having their protagonists renounce the stage for domestic security. At the turn of the century, the actress recurs with regularity in the writings of Arthur Schnitzler, Frank Wedekind, and Heinrich Mann. Among her many functions, this figure becomes a metaphor for the artificial "performances" of a woman's life, for the rituals in which a woman seeks above all to fashion herself according to man's image of her. The contemporary feminist author Elfriede Jelinek radicalizes this presentation of women as performing many roles in her plays Clara S. (1981) and Was geschah, nachdem Nora ihren Mann verlassen hatte, oder Stutzen der Gesellschaften (1979), among others. See also: Ebner-Eschenbach, Marie von; Femme Fatale; Fin-de-Siecle Vienna; Jelinek, Elfriede; Neuber, Friederike Caroline; Prostitution; Wandertheater. References: Mohrmann, Renate, ed., Die Schauspielerin (Frankfurt/M: Insel, 1989); Wetzels, Walter D., "Schauspielerinnen im 18. Jahrhundert—Zwei Perspektiven: Wilhelm Meister und die Memoiren der Schulze-Kummerfeld." Die Frau von der Reformation zur Romantik. Ed. Barbara Becker-Cantarino (Bonn: Bouvier, 1980) 195— 216. FERREL ROSE

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Adaptation/Translation. Adaptations and translations of others' works have a longer tradition in women's writing than publication of their own works. Translations provided aspiring women authors with an opportunity to school their style and to achieve some financial remuneration and an entryway into the world of publishing that could later be used for their own works. Translations required no formal training short of a knowledge of languages (which has traditionally been part of the education of bourgeois and upper-class girls) and no permission from the original's author (copyright was not instituted until about 1870). Since many renowned translators worked to benefit their husbands' research or to support them financially while they wrote original works (e.g., Luise Adelgunde Gottsched and Dorothea Veit-Schlegel), women's translations were not stigmatized to the same extent as their original works. Among the most important adaptations and translations by 18th- and 19th-century women are Luise Gottsched's adaptation Die Pietisterey im Fischbein-Rocke (1734; adapted from Guillaume-Hyacinthe Bougeant's La Femme Docteur, 1730); Sophie Mereau's translations (the letters of the French feminist and courtesan Ninon de Lenclos, published in her translation in 1797, 1802, and 1805; Giovanni Boccaccio's novel Fiametta, 1806 [orig. published as Fiammetta, 1343]; Die Prinzessin von Cleves, 1799, a liberal adaptation of Marie-Madeleine de La Fayette's novel La Princesse de Cleves, 1678); and Dorothea Tieck's translations of at least six Shakespeare dramas (Die beiden Veroneser; Coriolanus; Cymbeline; Macbeth; Timon von Athen; and Das Wintermarchen), all of which appeared in the famous Shakespeare translation by August Wilhelm Schlegel and Ludwig Tieck without mention of the translator's name (1825-1840). One indication that female translators enjoyed greater social acceptance than did female authors is the frequent designation of works that may have been originals as editions, adaptations, or translations. Today, it is difficult to ascertain whether all "translations" are really translations and not original works, since the self-styled "translators" usually fail to give the original's author and title and instead content themselves with allusions like ' 'nach dem Franzosischen'' or "iibersetzt aus dem Englischen." These vague citations make a search for the alleged originals exceedingly difficult; even where an author is given ("nach Destouches"), the search frequently reveals no original to match the translation. That the label "adaptation" or "translation" could serve as a shield against social censure of women's writing is further indicated by the authors' frequently contradictory use of the term. One of many examples is Victoria von Rupp's drama Jenny oder die Uneigenniitzigkeit, published as an original in 1777, and her play Marianne, published the same year by "Mifi Jennys Ubersetzerinn." Many authors used the label "translator" as a means of removing themselves from the text, frequently in conjunction with other means of denying authorship. Particularly in cases where the author's full name appears on the frontispiece, the pretense of translatorship served as a replacement for anonymity or a pseudonym. Christiane Friederike Huber specified herself as the mere editor of a play whose author and translator were purportedly anonymous: Cleveland was

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published in 1756 as "Von einer unbekannten Hand in teutsche Verse gebracht, und heraus gegeben von Christiana Friderica Huberinn." Both author and translator of the play remain a mystery. Gottsched's Pietisterey is one of the rare cases in which the extent to which the "translator" borrowed from the author can be established. Gottsched's play, as well as her introductory letters between the fictitious author and editor of the play, differs markedly from Bougeant's, even when she merely translates his original: because she merely translates ("Most worthy, highly learned Sir"), she establishes the author's gender as masculine. What was a noncommittal form of address in the original becomes an effective tool to conceal gender identity in the translation. Gottsched's justification of her author-figure as the "innocent translator" of the play is not entirely truthful: she made substantial changes to the play and rewrote the entire fourth act, so that her work can hardly be considered a straightforward translation. But more important, her twofold removal from the text (her self-representation as male and as the "mere" translator) reveals what may have been at the bottom of many fake translations issued from women's pens in the course of the 18th century: like anonymity and pseudonymity, translatorship demonstrated feminine modesty, while enabling the authors to proceed with their literary activities. In a context in which the female author was pronounced guilty, the innocent translator became a way of resolving a unsolvable conflict: to write and publish while adhering to contemporary notions of femininity, to become known and remain unknown at the same time. See also: Authorship; Mereau-Brentano, Sophie. References: Kord, Susanne. ' 'The Innocent Translator: Translation as Pseudonymous Behavior in Eighteenth-Century German Women's Writing." The Jerome Quarterly 9.3 (1994): 11-13; Vulliod, A., Guillaume Hyacinthe Bougeant, La Femme Docteur. Mme. Gottsched et son modele frangais Bougeant: ou, Jansenisme et pietisme par A. Vulliod (Lyon: A. Rey, 1912).

SUSANNE KORD A e s t h e t i c s , Feminine/Feminist. The term dates from the women's movement in the 1970s and encompasses one aspect of feminist theory. Concepts of feminine/feminist aesthetics challenge the assumption that aesthetic perception is gender-neutral and argue for recognition that in a male-dominated culture, male perception is portrayed as generic, universally true, and thus valid for all human beings. In a broader sense, then, theories of feminine/feminist aesthetics criticize philosophy's claims to generality and universality and instead seek to uncover gender biases in cultural productions, perceptions, and resulting definitions of art. By analyzing the effects male-defined categories of art have on female productions in literature, theater, art, music, film, and dance, feminine/ feminist aesthetic criticism accounts for the notable absences of female artists in cultural canons. Different approaches postulate that aesthetic perception is gender-specific: whereas feminine aesthetics bases its theories on fundamental biological sex

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differences, feminist aesthetics is grounded in socially learned gender-role behavior and thus offers the possibility of historic change. Combinations of these two approaches exist. In France, theoreticians such as Helene Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Julia Kristeva, and many others have deconstructed Western philosophical and literary traditions in an attempt to formulate theories that specifically account for women's significance in cultural history. Combining psychoanalytic, semiotic, and structuralist approaches in their critical readings of Sigmund Freud, Jacques Lacan, Jacques Derrida, and others, French feminists have developed aesthetic theories known as ecriture feminine. In Germany, Silvia Bovenschen launched a spirited debate with her controversial article "Uber die Frage: Gibt es eine weibliche Asthetik?" (1976). Arguing from a historical and sociocultural point of view that finds its origin in the Ideologiekritik of the Frankfurt School, Bovenschen analyzed the contrast between cultural representations of women (whore/saint; femme fatdldfemme fragile) and cultural productions by women in order to assess the ideological obstacles that prevented women from publicly engaging in cultural productions. In her essay, Bovenschen concluded that there is a feminine aesthetic ' 'if one is talking about aesthetic awareness and modes of sensory perception." However, she rejects any kind of "premeditated strategy which can predict what happens when female sensuality is freed." Combining French and German feminist theories, Sigrid Weigel questions the validity of ideological critical approaches for their assumed objective position outside discourse. Instead, Weigel attempts to refashion herself in discourse in order to investigate women's cultural space and exclusions. Following Irigaray's approach in Speculum (German: 1980), Weigel proposes to mimetically simulate dominant Western philosophical discourses in order to locate the spaces of exclusion and marginalization. However, this method, which Weigel calls "Der schielende Brick," requires a constant change in perspective in order both to trace the discourse in which women are already inscribed and, at the same time, to identify and critique the mechanisms of representation and exclusion. Another very different approach taken in theorizing feminine/feminist aesthetics is the concept of matriarchal aesthetics, formulated by Heide GottnerAbendroth in Die tanzende Gottin (1982). Gottner-Abendroth espouses a continuity of an ancient, specifically feminine culture, which can be traced back to a matriarchal origin. According to the author, indications of this specifically feminine aesthetic can be found in ancient myths, fairy tales, the magical, the fantastic, and dreams, all of which she considers as constituting a countersphere to the logical and rational world of Western civilization. As many theoreticians have pointed out, the inherent danger of feminine/ feminist aesthetics is its potentially normative implications, to the point of prescribing authentic women's cultural productions. However, critical approaches based on feminine/feminist aesthetics are fruitful in analyzing aesthetic percep-

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tion, as well as cultural productions and receptions of women in specific sociohistorical situations. See also: Canon, Literary; Ecriture Feminine; Essentialism/Constructionism; Fairy Tale; Fantastic Literature; Feminist Theory, British; Feminist Theory, French; Feminist Theory, German; Feminist Theory, U.S.; Femme Fatale; Femme Fragile; Frankfurt School; Gender Theories, History of; Ideologiekritik; Matriarchy; Participation and Exclusion; Psychoanalysis; Saint; Semiotics; Structuralism; Whore; Women's Movement. References: Bovenschen, Silvia, "Uber die Frage: Gibt es eine weibliche Asthetik?" Asthetik und Kommunikation 7 (1976): 60-75; Felski, Rita, Beyond Feminist Aesthetics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989); Marks, Elaine, and Isabelle de Courtivron, eds., New French Feminisms (New York: Schocken, 1981); Weigel, Sigrid, Die Stimme der Medusa (Dulmen: tende, 1987). FRIEDERIKE B. EMONDS A g e n c y — s e e : Engagierte Literatur; Identity Theories; New Historicism; Participation/Exclusion; Positionality; Postfeminism; Victim; Victimization Theories A l l e g o r y . This means primarily "the other speech" and refers in its premodern conceptualization to a form of representation in which the image/pictura is the reverse of the idea/scriptura. In this sense, allegory appears in biblical interpretations, in medieval texts (Minneallegorie), or in Baroque court representations. Allegorical usage of woman in its various manifestations (e.g., the personification of arts, sciences, virtues, and vices as women, the allegorical map of Europe as a woman, and the Baroque allegory of Frau Welt) alludes to notions of the other sex and to ambivalences ascribed to woman, femaleness, and the feminine. In these allegories, the woman is dehistoricized and deindividualized, reduced to a mere signifier or representational function and constructed as an Other. Allegory thus mirrors gender dynamics, while the operation of woman in allegory evokes the question of whether allegory can also be ' 'the speech of the Other" (Weigel). Whereas Hildegard von Bingen's use of allegory (e.g., Ecclesia in Scivias, 1141-1152) is based on the desexualized image and purity of the Virgin Mary, numerous allegorical representations by men allude to bodily characteristics and fearful images of woman's nature. Frau Welt, for example, is a woman with a beautiful, seductive front and a demonically decaying backside, thus a figure promoting the idea of a two-sided female nature. The allegorical alignment of image and idea of woman shifts in modernity. In contrast to premodern allegories, in which an idea was personified as a woman, ideas associated with woman and female sexuality are transferred onto other images (e.g., the city in Alfred Doblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz, 1929). In modernity, the perception of the city resembles the perception of woman, of the female body and female sexuality as being at once seductive and dangerous, desirable and destructive. The city carries on the referential structure of the

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feminine without necessarily personifying it through the image of the female body. Likewise, images of woman (e.g., the prostitute and the female corpse in Expressionism) allude to a cultural and aesthetic idea of woman that is lost and thus represents the allegory of aesthetic history (e.g., Walter Benjamin's Das Passagenwerk, pub. 1982). The allegory inscribes the rupture of an aesthetic tradition and marks a way of reading that is open to newly generated meanings. Modern allegory then proceeds from a static representation, that is, the separation between image/pictura and idea/scriptura, to a process of signification. As such, it marks the "speech of the Other" (e.g., femininity). From this signifying potential, a feminine aesthetic emerges that undermines preconceived images of woman critically, a figuration that Elisabeth Lenk has called "Die sich selbst verdoppelnde Frau." A manifestation of allegorical links between woman and history can be traced in so-called national allegories. Attempts to trace national consciousness in literature, such as in the narratives of the Ankunftsliteratur in the early German Democratic Republic (GDR), employ allegorical strategies to raise private actions to public relevance and transcend gender issues in favor of national consciousness and historical-political projects. See also: Aesthetics, Feminist; Ankunftsliteratur; Baroque Literature; Body, Female; Eternal Feminine; Expressionism; GDR Literature; GroBstadtroman; Love, Courtly; Medieval Literature; Minnesang; Mother Mary. References: Benjamin, Walter, Der Ursprung des deutschen Trauerspiels (Berlin: Ernst Rowohlt, 1930); Rauch, Angelika, "The Trauerspiel of the Prostituted Body: Or, Woman as Allegory of Modernity." Cultural Critique 10 (1988): 77-88; Weigel, Sigrid, Topographien der Geschlechter (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1990), "Von der anderen Rede zur Rede des Anderen: Benjamin liest Freud oder Zur Vorgeschichte der Moderne im Barock." Rowohlt Literaturmagazin 29 (1992): 47-55.

BIRGIT TAUTZ A l l g e m e i n e s Preufiisches Landrecht (ALR). The ALR, or the Prussian Civil Code, was initiated during the reign of Friedrich II, enforced during the reign of his successor, Friedrich Wilhelm II, in 1794, and not replaced until the institution of the Burgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB) in 1900. A product of the Enlightenment, this civil code sought to create a uniform legal and administrative policy for all of Prussia. The reform-minded Friedrich II wanted the ALR to provide quick and impartial answers to all legal and administrative problems of his monarchy. In order to do so, the ALR intervened in the authority of pater familias, the male head of the household, and that of the church by granting legal rights to all individuals. But the promulgation of these laws showed that they were ambivalent toward improving women's legal status. A married woman had virtually no rights under this law. The ALR's several articles in Part II, title I and II, declared the husband the head of the conjugal society. A woman was not permitted to practice any trade without her husband's permission. The principal end of mar-

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riage was the procreation and upbringing of children. A healthy mother had to breast-feed her baby; the duration of the nursing period was determined by her husband. Since the ALR defined marriage as a legal contract between a man and a woman, divorce became a legal possibility for women for the first time. However, the relaxation of taboos on divorce primarily benefited men, who gained the right to easy and arbitrary divorces as well as sole custody of their sons, while custody of daughters could be granted to mothers. Although the ALR seemed to guarantee the rights of widows by protecting their property, such property laws were meaningless in instances where a husband had misappropriated his wife's property. By ignoring women servants, housemaids, and daily wage earners, the ALR proved inadequate in protecting women of lower social groups. Economically, sexually, and legally, the women of lower social classes remained powerless. Class distinctions were by no means reduced by the enforcement of the ALR. The criminal law within the ALR brought a far-reaching change by abolishing torture and the death penalty. Religious freedom was guaranteed under the ALR, but it was the state's prerogative to decide a region's religion. The ALR, as an all-encompassing judicial system of all estates, benefited men with its liberal measures, but women's legal status remained inferior to men's. See also: Burgerliches Gesetzbuch (BGB); Enlightenment; Marriage. References: Becker-Cantarino, Barbara, Der lange Weg zur MUndigkeit: Frau und Literatur (1500-1800) (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987); Bell, Susan G, and Karen M. Offen, Women, the Family, and Freedom. Vol. 1:1750-1880 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1983); Koselleck, Reinhart, Kritik und Krise (Freiburg: Alber, 1959); Weber-Will, Susanne, Die rechtliche Stellung der Frau im Privatrecht des Preussischen Allgemeinen Landrechts von 1794 (Berne: Peter Lang, 1983).

VIBHA BAKSHIGOKHALE A m a t e u r Theater* In addition to professional German theater, an active amateur theater scene existed in the 17th and 18th centuries. Liebhabertheater, or amateur theater, was performed at court and by laypersons of various trades or occupations and also constituted a part of the salon culture of this period. Although courtiers hired theater troupes to perform for them, members of the court also engaged in theatrical productions themselves (and occasionally joined in the performances of a professional ensemble). Court officers and their wives often performed comedies, as did young nobility. In Vienna, for example, Maria Theresia's numerous children were active in amateur theater. Sometimes such plays were written by someone in the court circle; often they reflected the life and people at court and were performed in conjunction with weddings, seasonal festivities, anniversaries, birthdays, or coronations. The court circle of Weimar provides a representative instance of Liebhabertheater. The first staging of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Iphigenie auf Tauris (1787) demonstrates the nature of amateur theater at the courts: the actress and

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composer Corona Schroter, Goethe, Prince Constantin, Duke Karl August, the Hofmeister, and Goethe's secretary all performed. A more unique staging of this play was performed by an all-female cast at the home of Charlotte von Stein. Von Stein regularly performed on the Weimar Liebhaberbuhne and occasionally wrote plays for it, for example, her matinee Rino (1776), which describes young Goethe's arrival at the Weimar Court. Another arena for private/amateur theater events was provided by the salon culture, which was, in part, inspired by the ideas of the Enlightenment. These lively forums included not only discussions on literary, political, and philosophical issues but a variety of activities, including concerts, social gatherings, scholarly circles, and amateur theater performances. Held in private homes, salons were often hosted by women who belonged to the upper and/or educated classes. Since amateur theater was often conducted in a more private sphere, women could participate more readily by performing and/or writing theater pieces for performance. It also encouraged and promoted collaboration among women. Both the literary salon and amateur theater provided forums for the accepted female role of conversationalist and artist of dialogue. Thus, this "private" form of theater afforded women freedoms they were rarely permitted in more public forums. See also: Amazonentheater; Enlightenment; Matinee; Salonism. References: Case, Sue-Ellen, Feminism and Theatre (New York: Methuen, 1988); Goodman, Katherine R., "The Sign Speaks: Charlotte von Stein's Matinees." In the Shadow of Olympus. German Women Writers around 1800. Ed. Katherine R. Goodman and Edith Waldstein (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1992) 71-93.

ELIZABETH G. AMETSBICHLER A m a z o n . The myth of a separate nation of maiden warriors, Amazons (possibly from the Greek, meaning women "without breast" or "without men," or the Scythian Airorpatai meaning "men killers"), dates back to Homer's Iliad (c. 850 B.C.). According to the myth and its many adaptations and elaborations— from Homer, Aeschylus, and Herodotus to Propertius and Diodorus Siculus, and from Jean de Mandeville and Walter Raleigh to Heinrich von Kleist and Stefan Zweig—these independently minded, armed women on horseback conquered men once a year, for procreation, only to discard them (and any male offspring) once their services had been rendered. While the myth may contain memories of prehistoric matriarchal societies and fertility cults, it seems, above all, a male fantasy based on the fear of female self-sufficiency, the powerful phallic mother, and the desire inspired by the resisting virago or the androgynous companion-at-arms. Elements of the Amazon myth appear in practically all cultures, which attests to its rootedness in universal psychic needs. Powerful warrior maidens populate the Persian, Germanic, Slavic, and Indian imaginations. As emblem of the Other living at the frontier between civilization and savagery, not only were Amazons "sighted"

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in the Middle East (Scythia) or in Africa (the legendary kingdom of Monomotapa), but the discoverers of the New World, from Christopher Columbus and Cortes to Orellana and Carvajal, located the Amazon state first on a Caribbean island and, eventually, in the jungles of South America, along the Amazon River. The amorous-military quests of the mythic Amazon queens Hippolyta, Antiope, Penthesilea, Camilla, Xenobia, Libussa, Thalestris, and others enjoyed considerable popularity among male writers in Germany, particularly in the 18th and 19th centuries. As Klein points out, the conflict between women's manhatred and heterosexual love not only inspired tragedies like Kleist's Penthesilea (1808). On the contrary, the idea of a separatist women's state and the need for the perpetuation of the state through intercourse with "the enemy" also held considerable comic potential (cf. Aristophanes and his influence on 18th-century Amazon texts). From the 18th century onward, the term "Amazon" was used as a metaphor to designate any transgressive, male-identified woman who, in one way or another, did not conform to conventional female roles (e.g., "amazons of the pen," or the "de-natured" women in August Kotzebue's comedy Der weibliche Jakobiner-Club, 1791) and who therefore needed to be domesticated into conformity. The connection between Amazons and women's emancipation was established in a series of comedies in the 19th century in which the foolishness and ultimate futility of a separate state of Amazons are "proven." The two principal motifs of the Amazon myth—the motif of the crossdressing maiden warrior (who falls in love with her male rival) or that of the separate, matriarchally structured society—also fascinated some women writers. Earlier adaptations of the myth tend to stress the heroic or tragic aspects of gender bending, for example, Elisabeth von Nassau-Saarbriicken's Herpin (1430/1440) or Loher und Mailer (1405), or Maria Antonia Walpurgis' Talestris, Koniginn der Amazonen (1765) and Therese Huber's Die Familie Seldorf (\1951 1796), in which women in disguise fight for noble causes. In late 19th- and 20th-century adaptations, under the influence of J. J. Bachofen's speculations about matriarchal societies and the bourgeois women's movement, the Amazon myth is reappropriated for the battle between the sexes. Antifeminist writers such as Maria Janitschek (Die Amazonenschlacht, 1897) raid the myth for its potential to denounce the—supposed—excesses of women's emancipation. Feminists in search of images of powerful womanhood resort to the Amazon myth as a model for separate gynocracies (Bertha Eckstein-Diener's cultural history Mothers and Amazons, written in the 1930s, or Christa Wolf's Kassandra, 1983) or as metaphor for women's ongoing battle for equality in marriage and society (Use Langner's comedy Amazonen, written in 1933). See also: Androgyny; Gender Theories, History of; Gender Transformation; Hosenrolle; Matriarchy; Wolf, Christa. References: Klein, Hans, "Die antiken Amazonensagen in der deutschen Literatur." (Diss., Munich, 1919); Kleinbaum, Abby Wettan, The War against the Amazons (New

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York: McGraw-Hill, 1983); Tyrrell, William Blake, Amazons. A Study in Athenian Mythmaking (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984).

SUSANNE ZANTOP A m a z o n e n t h e a t e r . A historical precursor to cross-dressing on stage, this refers to a drama performed by an all-female cast. Such performances are known to have taken place in the 16th century in Tyrolian monasteries and during "women carnivals" (Weiberfastnacht). Also on record is an all-female folk theater performed in Biichsenhausen near Innsbruck. The early carnival plays, which were restricted to carnival itself, defined such practice as abnormal: at a time when female actors were still a rarity, the Amazonentheater performances occupied a position as a carnivalesque burlesque that did not meet the artistic aspirations of (male-acted) court drama or even of the entertainment plays performed by traveling troupes. When Amazonentheater evolved into cross-dressing (as of the 18th century), it retained some of these connotations: the recognition on the part of the women actors that they were, to a large extent, excluded from mainstream dramatic production—as actors, directors, or playwrights. This may have been part of the motivation for the all-female performance of Johann Wolfgang Goethe's Iphigenie aufTauris (1787) at the home of Charlotte von Stein, who had ostentatiously refused to attend the premiere at the court of Weimar. See also: Hosenrolle; Matinee. References: Dorrer, A, "Amazonentheater in Tirol." Komodie 4.5 (1946); Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen. Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992) 315. MARIA LUISE CAPUTO-MAYR

A n a g r a m . To find an anagram in an original word or phrase, its author must recombine all letters into new words without adding or dropping any characters. Literary historians credit the Greek poet Lycophron of Chalkis (3d century B.C.) with the invention of this rigid poetic technique. The Jewish Cabalists recognized the anagram as one method to probe the secrets of the Bible. The anagrammatic search for words within words enjoyed great popularity in the 16th and 17th centuries. Baroque poets used the procedure to derive pseudonyms (Johann Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen/Melchior Sternfels von Fuchshaim) or to reveal what is in a name: "Margareten/gern am rate/mager raten/mager arten/er mag raten/er mag arten/arm geraten" (Phillip von Zesen). The surrealists celebrated the anagram as a form of pure language liberated from the domination of aesthetic criteria or the compulsion to create meaning. A popular technique for deriving pseudonyms, anagrams protect the identity of an author yet contain within them the key to its disclosure (Hedwig Courts-Mahler/ Hedwig Relham). In addition to establishing artistic identities with the help of anagrammatic pseudonyms, women writers have used anagrams as counterdiscourses. Poet, writer, and artist Unica Ziirn produced well over 100 anagrams, ranging in

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length between three lines and several stanzas. Inspired but not limited by Surrealism, Ziirn's anagrams are neither accessible to traditional methods of poetry interpretation nor devoid of meaning as the surrealist contention would have it. She took the linguistic material for her anagrams from her social environment: names of people and places, addresses, lines from poems, questions, or common proverbial phrases. Ziirn, who spent extended periods of time in mental institutions and committed suicide, found coded prophecies in her anagrams: "Ohne noch gelebt zu haben werde ich sterben/ohne Erben, weich zu Bett den Hals gebrochen/nach zehn gelben Herbstwochen-o die Truebe." In her autobiographical writings Ziirn analyzes her obsession with anagrams as a "dangerous fever" that severed communication between her and her environment. Ziirn became part of the hermetic world that she created through her art. Among the few publications to appear during Ziirn's lifetime, her collections of anagrammatic poems gained her the recognition of her contemporaries and an honored position among the practitioners of this poetic form. The anagrammatist Oskar Pastior remarked, for instance, ' 'Mit dem Himmel in Rom, wenn er blau ist, haben die Anagrammgedichte insoweit zu tun als AZUR IN NUCE/UNICA ZUERN ist." With its strict rules, the anagram both challenges and channels the creativity of its author. Elfriede Czurda, an Austrian-born writer of experimental prose and poems, employs the anagrammatic form to objectify the relationship between text and author in an effort to discourage any interpretive attempts to locate the (female) author in her (supposedly autobiographical) text. Czurda's anagrams "falsify" canonical authors ("Mein Busen pocht, mein Herz/ziept, bin Reuse, hemm noch/" [Tieck/Czurda]) and suggest alternative exegeses of male texts that are neither standard interpretations nor interpretable by standard methods. With her anagrammatic (re-)compositions of visual elements, painter and sculptor Barbara Schmidt Heins introduces the critical potential of the anagram into the fine arts. See also: Authorship; Baroque Literature; Reception; Surrealism. References: Braun, Luzia, and Klaus Ruch, "Das Wiirfeln mit den Wortern: Geschichte und Bedeutung des Anagramms." Merkur 3 (1988): 225-36; Czurda, Elfriede, Falschungen. Anagramme und Gedichte (Berlin: Rainer, 1987); Schmidt Heins, Barbara, Anagramm Werke 1988/89 (Kiel: Stadtgalerie, 1990); Ziirn, Unica, Gesamtausgabe: Anagramme, vol.1 (Berlin: Brinkmann and Bose, 1988). KATHARINA GERSTENBERGER

Androgyny/Hermaphrodism. Any discussion of a possible neutralization or merging of sexual polarities must distinguish between the obviously rare biological mixing usually referred to as hermaphrodism and a less concrete, often symbolic, blending referred to as androgyny. Androgyny has drawn the most interest from feminist critics because of what some (e.g., Heilbrun) have seen as its potential for helping in the struggle toward sexual equality by eliminating the gendered designations often applied to behavior. Others remain skeptical (e.g., Friedrichsmeyer), arguing that because androgyny relies for its

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sustenance on rigid sexual dichotomies, it cannot eliminate them and, in fact, ultimately reinvigorates them. The vision of an ideal androgynous oneness is present in many religions and creation stories and entered Western philosophy through Plato's Symposium (c. 385 B.C.). In succeeding ages, this myth was interpreted differently, playing a major role in certain forms of mysticism and alchemy, the works of Jakob Bohme, and the German Pietists, who, in turn, transmitted it to the Jena Romantics. Many of the male writers and philosophers associated with that movement (e.g., Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis) believed, on some level, in the idealized sexual oneness promised by an androgynous ideal. Accepting a rigid notion of sexual difference—with men representing the rational and women the nonrational spheres—they believed that individual wholeness could be restored through sexual union. A similar concept of wholeness is also evident, though in different ways, in the works of some late 19th-century writers and in the thinking of Sigmund Freud and C. G. Jung. The systems these writers and thinkers conceived were overwhelmingly male-oriented, devised by men for the benefit of their own sex. When women have expressed desires falling under the rubric of androgyny, it has most often been for the purpose of partaking in the social and political benefits unavailable to them as women. When Karoline von Giinderrode articulated a desire to be a man, it was because she wanted to escape the narrow limits of accepted female behavior. Similarly, when Louise Aston shocked the bourgeoisie by wearing men's clothing and smoking a cigar, she was laying claim to a freer mode of existence than that granted her as a woman. In Weimar Germany, this more concrete form of androgyny was discernible beyond the lifestyles of a few isolated individuals; it was, in fact, the model according to which the emancipated "New Woman" frequently defined herself. Her crossdressing had its origins in a desire to neutralize existing sexual roles, so that she could share the benefits of modernization so far reserved primarily for men (e.g., Else Lasker-Schuler). Although cross-dressing during this period was not limited to women, it was most usually practiced by them. Similarly, when contemporary women writers thematize cross-dressing and an exchange of gender roles, as Irmtraud Morgner did in Leben und Abenteuer der Trobadora Beatriz (1974) and Christa Wolf did in "Selbstversuch" (1975), it is usually to challenge any essentialist notion of a gendered subject. See also: Aston, Louise; Essentialism/Constructionism; Gender Theories, History of; Gender Transformation; Geschlechtscharaktere; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Hosenrolle; Morgner, Irmtraud; Mysticism; New Woman; Pietism; Romanticism; Weimar Republic; Wolf, Christa. References: Benz, Ernst, Adam: Der Mythus vom Urmenschen (Munich: OttoWilhelm-Barth, 1955); Friedrichsmeyer, Sara, The Androgyne in Early German Romanticism: Friedrich Schlegel, Novalis and the Metaphysics of Love (Berne: Lang, 1983), "The Subversive Androgyne." Women in German Yearbook 3 (1986): 63-75; Heilbrun, Carolyn G, Towards a Recognition of Andogyny (New York: Harper and Row,

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1973); Petro, Patrice, Joyless Streets. Women and Melodramatic Representation in Weimar Germany (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). SARA FRIEDRICHSMEYER A n g e s t e l l t l n n e n r o m a n . This focuses on the male/female white-collar employee, who became a dominant member of the labor force in the 1920s. It constructs him or her as an urban working subject in a multiplicity of discourses and positions with respect to modernity. Recognized as a Zeitroman and related to the so-called Neue Sachlichkeit, this genre emphasizes authenticity and portrays—in accordance with sociological studies such as Siegfried Kracauer's Die Angestellten (1971)—the identity crisis of this new middle class and its impoverishment at the end of the Weimar period. The texts, which focus attention on the male white-collar worker, construed as the kleiner Mann, as in Hans Fallada's Kleiner Mann, was nun? (1932), have been mostly regarded as Angestelltenromane. Narratives concentrating on female Angestellte, in particular those by women writers, have been neglected, despite the fact that these novels often were best-sellers of the period. Irmgard Keun's Gilgi-eine von uns (1931), for instance, reached a printing of 30,000 within the first year of its publication. Emerging into professional and public spaces dominated formerly by men, the image of the white-collar employee also entered mass textual production. In Angestelltlnnenromane by male authors, the working woman tends to act as medium for articulation of political positions with respect to modernity. By presenting the experiences of the new typist at her workplace in Das Mddchen an der Orga Privat (1930), for instance, Rudolf Braune argues class issues such as economic exploitation and social struggle and ignores gender concerns related to the sexual politics of the workplace and the family sphere. Martin Kessel's Herrn Brechers Fiasko (1932) depicts male anxieties about the so-called feminization of the labor force that are projected onto the clerical employee. Texts by women writers (Christa Anita Brtick, Maria Gleit, Irmgard Keun, and Paula Schlier) who worked as professional typists voice women's desires and affirm female subjectivity. Keun's clerical employee in Gilgi embraces the new experience of work and urban life as a means of reinventing herself in a manner that sidesteps the conventional confines of patriarchally gendered relations. In Keun's Das kunstseidene Mddchen (1932), the typist Doris strives to escape the monotony of her clerical work life by projecting her fantasies about independence and glamour onto the material world of urban culture. Here, the processes of modernization and urbanization constitute a discourse that not only defines modes of production and class dynamics but also determines gender identities and relations. Staging sexual politics in the public and private spheres, Keun's texts reveal the function of woman and the female body as commodities of patriarchal exchange. Brtick's and Schlier's autobiographical novels depict women's working lives and the many indignities, including paltry wages, absence of promotional opportunities, and sexual harassment. The typists in Briick's Schicksale hinter Schreibmaschinen (1930) are seen as enslaved, as

18

ANKUNFTSLITERATUR

''Mddchen im Fron," subjected both to the effects of modernization—represented in the image of the typewriter—and to the arbitrary rule of their male superiors. The text closes with the protagonist's return to the familiar countryside of East Prussia, seeking refuge in "geistige Mutterlichkeit." Briick's second novel, Fin Mddchen mit Prokura (1932), portrays an alternative ending: the female protagonist takes the challenge of a high-level management position in a bank and focuses on her career. Schlier's Petras Aufzeichnungen oder Konzept einer Jugend nach dem Diktat der Zeit (1926) recounts the travails of a typist who navigates her way through a series of newspaper office pools, including that of the Nazi press Volkischer Beobachter. After 1933, these Angestelltlnnen romane were banned as "Asphaltliteratur" by the Nazis and fell—as did most of their authors—into oblivion. See also: Autobiography; Body, Female; GroBstadtroman National Socialism; Neue Sachlichkeit; New Woman; Weimar Republic. References: Harrigan, Renny, ' 'Novelistic Representation of die Berufstatige during the Weimar Republic." Women in German Yearbook 4 (1988): 97-124; Jordan, Christa, Zwischen Zerstreuung und Berauschung: die Angestellten in der Erzdhlprosa am Ende der Weimarer Republik (Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang, 1988); Kracauer, Siegfried, Die Angestellten (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1971), "Madchen im Beruf." Der Querschnitt 12.4 (1932): 238^3; Soltau, Heide, Trennungsspuren. Frauenliteratur der zwanziger Jahre (Frankfurt/M.: extra Buch, 1984); Von Soden, Kristine, and Maruta Schmidt, eds., Neue Frauen. Die zwanziger Jahre (Berlin: Elefanten Press, 1988). ANGELIKA FOHRICH Ankunftsliteratur. Literally, "literature of arrival," this refers to a corpus of prose literature that emerged in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) in the early 1960s. In contrast to their immediate predecessors, who had seen their task in the articulation of a postwar antifascist German culture, now a new generation of East German writers grappled with the formation of the individual in an already existing socialist society, with particular emphasis on the workplace. Two of the most prominent figures in this phase were women: Christa Wolf and Brigitte Reimann. Indeed, the term Ankunftsliteratur itself is taken from Reimann's novel Ankunft im Alltag (1961); Wolf's important text of this period is Der geteilte Himmel (1963). While both Reimann and Wolf are widely recognized for their contributions to the development of a specifically female, even feminist, East German sensibility in the 1970s, these early texts are seldom considered from the point of view of gender. However, gender issues are highly relevant to a discussion of Ankunftsliteratur on at least two levels: (1) the integration of women into the workplace and thus the relation of women to the realm of material production; and (2) the paradigmatic value of female protagonists in texts that are, to a large measure, concerned with discerning the relationship between individual and (socialist) society. Ankunftsliteratur is closely linked to the Bitterfelder Weg, a prescriptive cultural-political movement set in motion by a 1959 conference in the industrial

ANONYMITY

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town of Bitterfeld. The two-pronged program exhorted workers to write about their experiences ("Greif zur Feder, Kumpel!"), while writers were urged to enter the factories and gain firsthand knowledge of the workers' world ("Schriftsteller in die Betriebe!"). Reimann and Wolf were two of a small number of writers to take this directive seriously: Reimann lived for several years with the workers at a brown-coal combine in Hoyerswerda; Wolf worked for a shorter period in a factory that produced train cars in Halle. Each of their texts describes the transformational experiences of a young woman who works in a factory for some months prior to, or as part of, her university education. The world these female protagonists enter is still dominated and defined by men, and at this level, the texts comment on the continuing integration of women into the workforce in the GDR, though their protagonists are no longer cast as working-class heroines and pioneers but rather as members of the intelligentsia. Equally significant is the ideological function of gender in Reimann's and Wolf's early novels. Ankunftsliteratur was more than simply the expression of a programmatic moment in GDR cultural politics; it also reflected the historical transition from a period of postwar rebuilding to a relatively developed, stable, and—with the building of the Wall—closed socialist environment in the 1960s. Moreover, the Bitterfelder Weg itself was embedded in a context of internal conflict following Stalin's death and the Hungarian uprising. While the resulting crisis of confidence in socialism was largely repressed, its traces can be found in the painful, conflict-ridden passage into adulthood depicted in these novels of development. Reimann and Wolf draw the contours of an emergent, moral, socialist individual in clearly gendered terms; as representative figures in the quest for socialist subjectivity, these women embody a unique mixture of an idealized collectivist morality and evolving individual desires. Despite the ostensible centrality of the workplace—the factory—to these texts, competing models of (heterosexual) sexuality and love form their dramatic core. See also: GDR Literature; Marxist Theories; Socialism; Socialist Realism; Wolf, Christa. References: Fehervary, Helen, "Die erzahlerische Kolonisierung des weiblichen Schweigens: Frau und Arbeit in der DDR-Literatur." Arbeit als Thema in der deutschen Literatur vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart. Ed. Reinhold Grimm and Jost Hermand (K6nigstein/Ts.: Athenaum, 1979) 171-195; Herminghouse, Patricia, "Wunschbild, Vorbild oder Portrat? Zur Darstellung der Frau im Roman der DDR." Literatur und Literaturtheorie in der DDR. Ed. Patricia Herminghouse and Peter Uwe Hohendahl (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1976) 281-334. Meyer-Goskau, Frauke, "Bildlose Zukunft— Verlorene Geschichte: Die "Ankunftsliteratur" zwischen 1961 und 1964 in exemplarischen Studien" (Diss., University of Bremen, 1980); Zimmermann, Peter, Industrieliteratur der DDR: Vom Helden der Arbeit zum Planer und Leiter (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984). ELIZABETH MITTMAN

Anonymity—see: Authorship

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ANTAGONIST

Antagonist—see: Protagonist/Antagonist A n t h o l o g y . The evolution of German anthology publishing is a significant indicator of the gradual emergence of women's literary voices, the effective questioning and redefinition of genre and canonical boundaries by feminist scholars and editors, and the shifting landscape in the publishing industry itself toward greater gender balance in literary production. Traditionally, women were, at best, anthologized by prominent male Germanists as a group in collections of Romantic women's poetry or letters (Paul Landau, Frauenbriefe der Romantik, 1923); at worst, as lone females in collections of male writing, especially poetry (see Haass' study of poetry anthologies). Tokenism and genre restrictions have given way recently to a slightly greater proportion of women in genrebased collections (e.g., 6 of 20 in a 1989 Fischer volume of Austrian short prose), as well as new genres such as primary political texts by women (Fritz Bottger, Frauen im Aufbruch, 1977). Women editors and collaborators have produced anthologies of male and female writers (e.g., vol. 4 of Susanne Wolfram and Uwe Carsten's multivolume anthology of contemporary plays, Theater Theater, features two females—one of them anonymous—and seven males of various nationalities). By the late 1970s and early 1980s, mainstream German publishers had begun to introduce series of women's anthologies. Aside from recovering and making readily accessible centuries of unknown, suppressed, or forgotten belletristic literature by women (Gisela Brinker-Gabler, Deutsche Dichterinnen vom 16. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart, 1978; Christine Herbst, Das Geschlecht der Engel, 1992), feminist scholars have also explored the genre of first-person narrative to the fullest, following the example of German Democratic Republic (GDR) pioneers in the genre of interview Protokolle in the late 1970s (Sarah Kirsch, Pantherfrau, 1973; Maxie Wander, Guten Morgen, Du Schone, 1974) with theme-based anthologies reflecting feminist scholarship on subjectivity, the emergence of oral history, and the women's movement in general. Fischer's Frauen in der Gesellschaft series, for example, includes women's writing on aging (Helena Klostermann, Alter als Herausforderung, 1990); separation and loss (Helga Hasing and Ingeborg Mues, Du gehst fort, und ich bleib da, 1989), midlife crisis, coping with AIDS and other illnesses; motherhood (Jutta Menschik, Fin Stuck von mir: Mutter erzdhlen, 1987); mother-daughter relationships, marriage, work and vocation (Brinker-Gabler, Frauenarbeit und Beruf 1979); women's experience in particular historical periods (Irmgard Weyrather, Ich bin noch aus dem vorigen Jahrhundert: Frauenleben zwischen Kaiserreich und Wirtschaftswunder; Gisela Dischner, Fine stumme Generation berichtet, 1982—women's voices from the 1930s and 1940s); and antiwar texts by women (Brinker-Gabler, Frauen gegen den Krieg, 1980). Since unification, there is a broad spate of anthologies of women's texts from the old and the new German states, for example, Christine Eifler's collection of nine women's "Ost-WestErfahrungen," Kreuz und Quer, 1994.

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Not to be overlooked is the achievement of smaller and specifically women's publishers, such as Orlanda Frauenverlag, in documenting the experience of marginalized groups of women (Afro-Germans or lesbians, for example, Katherina Oguntoye et al., Farbe bekennen, 1986) and in expanding the bibliography of women's history (Susanne zur Nieden, Alltag im Ausnahmezustand, 1993— women's accounts of the destruction of Germany, 1943-1945; Petra Zwaka, Ich bin meine eigene Frauenbewegung, 1991—women's perspectives on the history of Berlin). See also: Black German Literature; Canon, Literary; FRG Literature (since 1990); GDR Literature; Mother-Daughter Relationship; Pacifism; Protokolle; Unification, German; Wander, Maxi: Guten Morgen, du Schone. References: Bark, Joachim, and Dieter Pforte, eds., Die deutschsprachige Anthologie, 2 vols. (Frankfurt/M.: Klostermann, 1969-1970); Haass, Sabine, Gedichtanthologien der viktorianischen Zeit: eine buchgeschichtliche Untersuchung zum Wandel des literarischen Geschmacks (Nuremberg: H. Carl, 1986). NANCY LUKENS Anticlimax. Originally, the term designated a rhetorical device in which the intensity or meaning of a sequence of expressions declines, often for humorous purposes (e.g., Johann Wolfgang Goethe's "Doktoren, Magister, Schreiber und Pfaffen"). The humor is generated by replacing the expected increase or climax with a sudden decline of intensity or meaning. In literature, an anticlimax is frequently realized as an unexpected twist in the plot, generally used in the dramatic and narrative genres. Its purpose is usually to force the narrative or drama in an entirely unexpected direction, thereby deliberately disappointing the reader's or spectator's expectations. Like the Aristotelian peripeteia, which denotes a reversal of the protagonist's fortune in the middle of the play, the anticlimax often provides the impetus for a new and radically different direction in the plot. It replaces, eradicates, or seriously relativizes the climax, while peripeteia introduces a series of events that ultimately result in a different climax. The anticlimax differs from peripeteia mainly in that it occurs most frequently at the end of the play, that is, directly preceding the climax or catastrophe (although there are exceptions to this in post-Aristotelian drama) and that it constitutes an unexpected relativization of, or change in, the ending, in contrast to peripeteia: the events set in motion by peripeteia make the new climax inevitable and thus anticipated by the viewer. In women's literature, the technique was used predominantly to deconstruct traditional literary conventions by which closure was achieved. Frequently, the anticlimax occurs for no apparent reason and remains unexplained. One example is Friederike Sophie Hensel-Seyler's drama Die Familie aufdem Lande (1770), in which the Happy End is achieved in the conventional manner—via the marriage of the main protagonists—but is severely relativized by the insanity of the bride, which occurs in the fourth act and is not reversed. Karoline von Giinderrode employs a similar technique in her tragedy Magie und Schicksal (1805), in which the curtain opens at the beginning of the third act to reveal the male

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APHORISM

lead dead on the stage—without explanation. Such blatant breaches of dramatic practice suggest that the anticlimax in women's literature was frequently more than just a means of criticizing established literary conventions. While upholding the mechanism of the Happy End or the tragic ending, the authors deprive the ending of its meaning or, rather, of its meaningfulness; they deny the bride the happiness promised by the Happy End and the tragic hero the glory of his death and the spectators' sympathies. In an ironic twist, the anticlimax enables the authors to follow dramatic convention to the letter and to stage the ending comme ilfaut, while rejecting the philosophy expressed by that ending (e.g., the happiness achieved through marriage or the glorification of "tragic" deaths). See also: Comedie Larmoyante; Comedy; Giinderrode, Karoline von; Tragedy. References: Kord, Susanne, Ein Blick hinter die Kulissen: Deutschsprachige Dramatikerinnen im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1992), "Tugend im Rampenlicht: Friederike Sophie Hensel als Schauspielerin und Dramatikerin." The German Quarterly 66.1 (1993): 1-19; Schmidt, Henry J., How Dramas End: Essays on the German Sturm und Drang, Buchner, Hauptmann, and Fleisser (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1992). SUSANNE KORD A p h o r i s m . As a literary term, "aphorism" refers to a terse, pithy statement expressing a thought or observation. Highly personal in nature, aphorisms present an original worldview either through their assertions or through their unusual point of view, from which they arrive at their conclusions. These new and often provoking ideas are formally expressed through stylistic elements such as antithesis, paradox, wordplay, and parallelism. Aphorisms are characterized by their autonomy, although they usually appear in a collection; they do not establish a thematic or formal unity but remain isolated from each other. A number of women writers have published aphorisms, but—with the exception of Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach and possibly Gertrud von Le Fort—they are hardly ever included in major anthologies, nor are their aphorisms the object of scholarly investigations. This disregard for female aphoristic writings finds its most blatant expression in Walter Wehe's claim that aphorisms are a pronounced male literary form. Furthermore, many aphorisms on the subject of women by male writers, from Georg Christoph Lichtenberg to Elias Canetti, are often sexist in tone, emphasizing the intellectual and moral inferiority of women. Some of Rahel Varnhagen's diary entries are decidedly aphoristic, but the first and most successful female aphoristic writer is Marie von EbnerEschenbach. Her collection of aphorisms (1880) reached three expanded editions during her lifetime. The Insel publishing house published two new editions in 1982 (Leipzig) and 1986 (Frankfurt/M.). Ebner-Eschenbach's aphorisms are noted for their perfection of form, their perceptiveness about human nature, and their insistence on moral and social improvement of human conditions, as well as their feminist tendency. The female experience is also the focus of Phia Rilke. Her collection of aphorisms Ephemeriden (1900) reveals a profound disillusion-

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ment with the institution of marriage, the only avenue open to a woman of her class. In contrast, the aphorisms of Gertrud von Le Fort (1962) show the strong influence of Christianity on the author's work and worldview, including her view on the role of women. Since the late 1970s, the number of publications by female aphoristic writers has increased. Ruth Mayer's collection of aphorisms Ansichtsseiten (1976) saw a second edition in 1979; Use Tonnies published her collection In den Spiegel geworfen in 1978; Charlotte Bohler-Mueller's aphorisms (