German History from the Margins

In Clemens Brentano's novella, "Die Mehreren Wehmüller und ungarische Nationalgesichter" (1817),[1] the characters of the fictional world are assembled at a geographical and symbolic margin as constituted by the "Pestkordon", a frontier which, as it turns out, is based on a misunderstanding and mistake. Unnecessary and temporary as it may be, its effects are disastrous. Identities are confused, couples and families separated, livelihoods threatened, and, above all, control is taken out of the hands of the actors. In the end, the margin that separates them is transformed into the same margin that reunites the numerous split personalities of the novella. Crucially, this unification is accomplished through a fictional character who crosses the fake border of the Pestkordon, exposing its artificiality while simultaneously transcending it. Surprisingly, this courageous character is not only a woman, she also resembles an amazon, and is a ethnically identified as a Gypsy.[2] The margin here becomes the centre of action, and the marginalised gypsy becomes the agent in overcoming borders, thus linking the discourse of the gypsy with that of the patriotic and nationalist discourse of German liberation and unification. Why should the gypsy, the social outcast, eschewed, shunned and spurned by society, subjected to a contemporary objectifying anthropological and ethnographic scientific discourse,[3] become the literary agents of utopian ideas?

Some easy answers to this question are quick at hand. The gypsy, as an outcast of society, offers the artist a welcome identificatory potential, especially as her existence at the margins of society is associated with freedom from conventions and norms, free movement and the romantic image of a worryfree life without external responsibilities. If we add to this the symbolic proximity of the exotic and uncivilised, natural, noble savage in which the Gypsy finds herself, her attraction to the Romantic artist in particular is obvious. But, I would argue, the significance of the Gypsy figure in German literature of the late 18^th and early 19^th century is rooted more deeply. Rather than being a motivic foil of independence and freedom, the contemporary image of the Gypsy touches on a myriad of connotations which the artist was able to utilise and elaborate upon in order to formulate more complex arguments. Rather than offering a literary retreat from reality, the Gypsy figure offers a definite subversive potential, of which, nevertheless, the status of the Gypsy within contemporary society is excluded.[4]

The turn of the 18^th to the 19^th century saw a rise in concern with Romanies. Initiated by the ethnographic study, itself largely due to the popularity of its topic, by Heinrich Grellmann from 1783 and 1787, the Gypsy soon made her way into the corpus of literature. Even contributions to scientific research were only rarely based on the reality of the Sinti living in Germany since the early 15^th century. We are more precisely confronted with a direct line of plagiarism,[5] of scholars who lacked any contact with the people they wrote about. Only Grellmann slightly challenged the plagiary practice by refuting many myths associated with the Sinti but put at their place their oriental origin and ethnic difference. This ethnic argument leads him to the conclusion that the ethnicity of the Sinti determines their behaviour and therefore permanently excludes them from civilised and enlightened society. All the more surprising it is, then, that the very, mostly negative, myths which are so heavily exposed for their superstitious nature and were the basis for a first wave of social exclusion of the Romanies, reappear, albeit with a new and positive interpretation, in the literary discourse of the Gypsy.

The literary Gypsy figure sets out as a marginal character. In Goethe's Götz von Berlichingen (1804),[6] this marginality is translated into spatial terms by locating the Gypsy camp in the forest, as well as in structural terms by increasingly limiting their relevance and length of occurrence in the drama in the various stages of its development.[7] In Schiller's Jungfrau von Orleans,[8] Johanna encounters a Gypsy who gives her the helmet that will inspire her transformation into a feared warrior. This episode is merely narrated as a Botenbericht, thus excluding the Gypsy woman from the personelle of the play. Still quantitatively marginal, but qualitatively making its way into the centre, Gypsies are present in Heinrich von Kleist's Michael Kohlhaas (1808)[9] and Goethe's Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre (1795/96). In the former, the ambivalent character of Mignon indicates the ambivalence associated with the gypsy and the ground for further exploration it offers. In the latter, the Gypsy character of Lisbeth is the narrative and perspectivic focus of the novella, perceived as a foreign element just as Gypsies are perceived as foreign elements in spite of their presence in Germany since the early 15^th century. Finally, Gypsy characters take central stage in the Brentano novella "Die mehreren Wehmüller" (1817),[10] his only recently edited drama fragment Zigeunerin,[11] Arnims Isabella von Ägypten (1812)[12] and finally Caroline von Wolzogen's prose Die Zigeuner (1826/27).[13] At the same time, the period of 1781 to 1803 saw an unprecedented non-fictional interest in the Gypsies, which is documented by nine major publications in only 22 years, while previously and subsequently this would indicate the number of major and minor publications for the length of a century.[14]

In non-fictional, i.e. mainly ethnographic, journalistic and criminologistic writings, representations of Gypsies are of a negative nature throughout. This includes both the discription of their behaviour as well as that of their outer appearance, which is perceived as dark, foreign and ugly. At the same time as the literary and ethnologic fashion of the Gypsy figure is initiated, we are presented with the 1782 court case concerning allegations of cannibalism voiced against a group of Sinti. In spite of the allegedly devoured bodies later being found alive, the accused Sinti were extensively tortured, sentenced on the grounds of their forced admittance to the crime and 41 of the death sentence were carried out.[15] This rift between fictional and "factual" discourses is significant.

It is all the more striking, then, that literary manifestations of the so-called Gypsy motif is characterised by a mainly positive depiction of Gypsies. As numerous studies on the motif structure of Gypsy representations have shown,[16] we are mostly dealing with beautiful and virtuous, young women, often counterpositioned with a hag-like old woman, usually the grandmother or foster parent of the beautiful Gypsy girl. However, I wish to illustrate how the narrative mediation of the representation of Gypsies indicate a more complex relevance for the early 19^th century writer which goes beyond the exotic image that is the female Gypsy.

The narrative discourse of the Gypsy displays a significant oscillation between tendencies of exerting control over the image and the image and fictional character to liberate itself from the discourse. To start with, we encounter a purely functionalised Gypsy character in Schiller's Die Jungfrau von Orleans. The Gypsy episode is narrated within the play and thus distanced from the dramatic world. The Gypsy woman thus takes on a purely imaginary position, her action is a pure sign which Johanna interpreted and translated into action. Thus, a mythical character of the Gypsy figure is established. This mythical character is, of course, closely mirrored in Kleist's use of the same scenario. Again, it is an old fortune-telling Gypsy who equips the protagonist and title character of the novella Michael Kohlhaas with behavioural options. The setting, again, is that of a market scene, the Gypsy appears from and disappears into the anonymous mass of the folk, representing the voice of the people at the same time as the voice of Kohlhaas' recently deceased wife Lisbeth. Diverting from the intertextual references to Schiller, the symbol of power and empowerment is no longer the material helmet, but the material and symbolic word on a scrap of paper. The word, though read by Kohlhaas in the hour of his death, is never interpreted or revealed to either reader, narrator, or any other of the fictional characters. The secret bond remains that between Kohlhaas and the Gypsy, both of them revolt against the written word of authority as constituted by the chronicle and the discourse of authorities it resembles. The Gypsy, a representative of the common people from which she emerges into our and Kohlhaas' visual field, provides the power over the symbolic contents of the written word which allows Kohlhaas the revolt and revenge for his unjust treatment. This is to be read in political terms as a consideration of the just nature of a potential revolt against the occupying Napoleonic forces by the German people. Here, the revolt is symbolic and above all textual, i.e. literary, while it places the writer in the political arena of nationalism and representative for the people who lack a voice. Kohlhaas asks the question whether there can be a situation where political revolt, albeit, literary revolt, is legitimate.

This tentative revolt enabled by the exchange of a material symbol from Gypsy figure to protagonist is also present in Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, where the character Mignon's revolt is eventually controlled by the narrative process. Her perception through the subjective eyes of the protagonist Wilhelm Meister place her as an essentially strange, androgynous, disformed character. Her refusal against growth and sexual unambiguousness contrasts fundamentally with Wilhelm Meister's developmental path. At the same time, she is his mirror image through which he achieves to reflect upon his own personality and identity. A premordial figure, she is essentially beyond structuring attempts as the character of her music making demonstrates.[17] Her intuitive art and form of expression is unprecedented and genial yet depends on the transmission through a form giving agent.[18] As her singing is transcribed by Wilhelm, thus losing a considerable part of its originality, so her character is transmitted by the narrative until the distance between the experience of Mignon becomes more and more pronounced. In the end, Mignon is transformed into an ideal artefact, embalmed yet dead, while Wilhelm feels strangely liberated and finally apt for the world. His development is thus achieved through the castrating act of art directed against the essentially erotic and precivilised figure of Mignon – to speak in Nietzsche’s term, the Apollinic principle represented by the formed character of Wilhelm successfully subjugates the Dionysian principle enacted by Mignon.

Mignon, the embodiment of pure, primordial poetry, is resurrected by the Romantics and her threat of and call for revolt is finally heard in Brentano's "Die mehreren Wehmüller". Intertextually linking his Gypsy characters of Mitidika and Mihaly with Mignon by a similarity in names (both Mitidika and Mignon mean "little one"[19]), their androgynous nature and their musicality, Mignon is reassessed and re-interpreted in the form of the two Gypsies of his novella. This time, it is the Gypsy characters who hold the narrative threads together and eventually achieve to reunite all that belongs together, including themselves, through the narrative act of storytelling in combination with the bodily and sensual art of music and dance. But more than resolving uncertain identities and confusion caused by artificial boundaries, Brentano employs the Gypsy character in the context of the nationalist discourse, thus reiterating Kleist's argument. In this function, the two Gypsy characters display a link to oral and folkloric art forms, namely storytelling and music. Through the enactment of these art forms they resolve uncertainties of identity, thus deciphering the symbols that have become uncertain in their meaning. They also accomplish to join that which belongs together, be it couples or families, or nationalities. The number of the “Nationalgesichter”, 37,  hints at the divided nature of the German state so that the geographical borders of the novella, induced by a threatening but none-existent disease, are to be interpreted as the ill-natured state of the German nation, split into 37 state by frontiers that divide rather than join. The stateless and yet international Gypsy figure in the most literal sense of the word can be at home everywhere and, at the same time, nowhere and is thus not bound to existing borders. The ability to transcend borders which act on other characters as limitations of their scope of action offer a utopian approach in relation to existing margins and borders.

In Arnim's Isabella von Ägypten we are finally presented with a transcendence of mortal existence of Isabella’s realm, or, pure utopian poetry; a transcendence mirrored in narrative terms. The Gypsy character of Isabella is here imaged as the unsuspecting leader of her people whose task it is to lead her people back to their country of origin. As Brentano before him, Arnim borrows heavily from Grellmann. Thus we find the names of Isabella and her father, the Gypsy prince Michael, in his study, as well as descriptions of outer appearance and lifestyle. Mainly, however, Arnim utilises the myth of the penitential pilgrimage, exposed for its fictitiousness by Grellmann, in order to provide a heilsgeschichtliches reading in the novella. Isabella is thus transformed into a messianic, or Moses-like, character who leads her people from suffering on foreign soils to the promised land. Counterpositioned with her is her lover and father of her son, the future King Charles V, who is guided by principles of material interest rather than the well-being of his people, which, as the narrative argues, results in his subsequent problematic reign and unhappiness of the common people. A parallel to contemporary times is easily drawn. Just like Brentano criticises the mass produced paintings fabricated by Wehmüller and Froschauer as a capitalist form of art devoid of intuition, individuality and meaning, so does Arnim criticise an increasingly materialistically oriented society. While the narrator facilitates the recipient’s identification with Isabella who is guided by values of artruism and vision, the narrator induces antipathic portrayals of such characters for whom the accumulation of material goods and monetary wealth is more important than spirituality. Such characters, as the ever treasure hunting Bärenhäuter (bearskin) and the Allraun (…) Cornelius as well as the future King Charles V betray their own for their individual benefit and are punished by falling victim themselves to their own fictive creations. However, this interpretation is complicated by the fact that they are created and brought to life by Isabella and her grandmother through enacting folk wisdom (magic and storytelling) in order to produce, in turn, beings that threaten the existence and fulfilment of Isabella’s providence. If we add Isabella's creativity, the magical incantation and bringing to life of creatures who she later fails to control, it becomes apparent that she is, like her sister Mitidika, an artist figure, even if an essentially problematic one. Again, it is argued that poetry needs to guide the running of a successful civitas and Gypsy characters are the thankful agent and carrier of symbolic meaning.

The limitations of this liberating narrative discourse are, however, situated in the socio-historical reality of Romanies due to their exclusion in real terms. The liberation and subversion always points back to the originator of the discourse, the critical artist. The Gypsy character offers a potential for critical discourse and poetic utopia only for its originator while the Gypsy herself remains objectified as the symbolic space and body for such subversive intentions. This objectification is achieved by use of narrative, perspectivic and motivic structure.

In text structural terms, the marginal and other as constituted by the Gypsy characters in the various texts is kept at a formal distance through the use of narrative agency and perspectivic structure. As a consequence, Gypsy characters are essentially objects of the narrative discourse and heterodiegetically mediated. This is achieved throughout by a personal difference between the fictional narrator on the one hand and the fictional character of the Gypsy on the other. The Gypsy is narrated by a distinct and authoritative narrator, in most instances, a reliable and omniscient narrator. An exception to this is Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas, where the novella is equipped with an unreliable narrator. His unreliability is demonstrated specifically in the Gypsy episode of the story indicating that the Gypsy plays a crucial role in the problematisation of the narrative discourse as such and, with it, the belief in authoritative discourses in general. This narrative structure places the Gypsy character firmly in the position of a narrated object. Only at temporarily limited and hierarchically inferior instances is the Gypsy character given the opportunity to assert their subject character by assuming the role of a narrator. Such instances are characterised by a rare occurrence in only some of the texts as well as their embedded narrative context, which indicates their inferior nature in relation to the authoritative and hierarchically superior frame narrative. Examples for this techniques can be found in Isabella von Ägypten, where Braka, Isabella’s grandmother, narrates the folk tale of the Bärenhäuter in an interior narrative, thus bringing the narrated object to life – a sign of the belief in the incantational power of the orally narrated word.

As far as perspectivic structure is concerned, the tendency in most texts is towards disallowing the focalisation of the fictional world through the body of the Gypsy characters. This furthers the distancing process already initiated through the  heterodiegetic narrative structure. By refusing the recipient of the narrative discourse to assume the perspective of a Gypsy character, the recipient, alongside the narrator, is invited to objectify the fictional Gypsy character which impedes the interpretation and understanding of the Gypsy character as a subject and possible identificatory object. The recipient thus assumes the perspective of other focalising agents other than the Gypsy character.

Finally, the Gypsy character is counterpositioned in text structural terms with other characters to whom marginality is attributed. The nature of this counterpositioning process determines to a great extent the reception of the Gypsy character by the recipient. We can distinguish three main types of such relations of contrast and correspondence, which can materialise in isolation or in combination: Firstly, Gypsy character may be counterpositioned with other, minor, that is quantitatively marginal, Gypsy characters displaying a degree of difference. Thus, we encounter various instances in which the young female Gypsy character is counterpositioned with an old and unattractive Gypsy character, such as in “Die mehreren Wehmüller” and Isabella von Ägypten Secondly, Gypsy characters may be counterpositioned with a more positively evaluated other marginal character, usually in a complex combination of corresponding and contrasting characteristics which both link the two characters and set them apart. This is the case in Michael Kohlhaas with reference to the relation between the Gypsy woman and Kohlhaas’ deceased wife. Thirdly, Gypsy characters may be counterpositioned with another marginal character who is attributed negatively traits, a practice which leads to the consequent re-evaluation of the Gypsy character and her idealisation. The chosen preference for this last option is the character of the male Jew. This is particularly striking as this option is the preferred pattern in text of the Romantic authors and in the light of the similarities in negative myths and stereotyping of the contemporary image of the Jew and the Gypsy. Both are associated with an ethnic group in Diaspora and on a perceived eternal migration, with oriental origins. Additionally, similar negative attributes are projected on both groups, such as material robbery of the population, the poisoning of fountains etc. In the Romantic texts however, and a prime example in this context is Arnim's Isabella von Ägypten, the idealisation of the Gypsy character is one side of the same coin as the demonisation of the Jewish character. Thus, Bella's doppelgaenger Golem Bella has come to life due to a Jewish myth, generated by a Jew and equipped with selfishness, rudeness, lack of altruistic values and vision which characterise the real Bella. With the doubling of Bella, Bella is elevated to a pedestal, reminiscent of an ideal of femininity that evoke both aspects of the Virgin Mary, namely caring motherhood and innocent virginity, while Golem Bella represents the materialistically-minded petty bourgeoisie that has lost any idealistic value system. It takes an idealised, feminine Bella to lead a people into a safe haven of a perfect society and nation, while the materialistically oriented Golem Bella, as well as the future King Charles V succumb to the temptations of money and lose sight of the vision, thus endangering the well being of their people which in turn will lead to discontent, revolt, chaos and bloodshed.[20]

Representations of Gypsies are intrinsically linked to ideas of nationhood, a viable society and a critique of the status quo. This subversive potential is directed against the increasingly materialistic state, as well as being a protest against French occupation and lack of national unity due to a missing link of solidarity and common vision. However, the selection of attributes that lead to the idealisation of the young Gypsy woman do not have repercussion in their treatment in the extra-fictional world as the diverging discourse of ethnographic and criminological texts demonstrate. Rather, Gypsy characters are functionalised within the texts for a utopian vision of ideal statehood by drawing on their association with freedom from norms and conventions and their intrinsic perceived otherness which allow them to be used as a symbol for an alternative nationhood. Their otherness may be based on notions of androgyny as suggested in Grellmann's study and subsequently elaborated by Brentano in particular, or their association with magic which positions them in a potential transcendental field as witnessed in Michael Kohlhaas, Die Jungfrau von Orleans, Isabella von Ägypten and "Die Mehreren Wehmüller". The outcome remains the same: the Gypsy figure is idealised and thus removed from her real counterpart, the sign becomes independent from its referent and can be assigned new meanings. The process of assigning new and throughout positive meanings is mirrored by a similar, but reverted process of demonisation, which takes as its victims old female gypsies or the fictional Jewish character. Idealisation is thus never innocent, neither for the idealised nor the demonised character.