Abstract
With reference to current models of stereotype formation, Droste’s depiction of Jewishness is analyzed as a reaction to the existential anxiety of her day. Three main categories emerge: Jews as representatives of criminality, of black magic and of Old Testamentary retribution. These associations combine to produce the story’s characteristic narrative dualism.
Zusammenfassung
Drostes Darstellung von Judentum wird an Hand heutiger Modelle der Stereotypenbildung untersucht und ihre Einstellung zur Vergangenheit als Antwort auf existentielle Ängste analysiert. Beleuchtet wird die Verbindung der Juden mit Verbrechen, schwarzem Zauber und alttestamentarischer Vergeltung. Diese Assoziationen erzeugen den typischen Dualismus der Erzählweise.
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Literature
Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism, New York 1993, 62.
The literature on this novella is so extensive as to make a running discussion of major scholarly issues extremely cumbersome. For the sake of convenience I draw my references, wherever possible, from the essays collected in the Sonderheft of the Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 99 (1979), devoted entirely to Die Judenbuche. The issue of ambiguity was introduced into modern debates by Heinrich Henel, “Annette von Droste-Hülshoff: Erzählstil und Wirklichkeit“, in: Egon Schwarz (Ed.), Festschrift für Bernhard Blume, Göttingen 1967, 146–172 and is supported to various degrees by: Bernd Kortländer, “Wahrheit und Wahrscheinlichkeit“, ZfdPh, 86–99; and Maruta Lietina-Ray, “Das Recht der öffentlichen Meinung“, ZfdPh, 99–109. This interpretation is opposed by: Benno von Wiese, “Porträt eines Mörders“, ZfdPh, 32–48
Winfried Freund, “Der Mörder des Juden Aarons“, Wirkendes Wort 19/4 (1969), 244–253
Heinz Rölleke, “Erzähltes Mysterium“, Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 42 (1968), 399–426
Friedrich Sengle, Biedermeierzeit, III, Stuttgart 1980, 627–633; and
Wolfgang Wittkowski, “Die Judenbuche: Das ärgernis des Rätsels„, Droste-Jahrbuch 1 (1986), 107–128. On the central role of this question in Droste scholarship, see
Raleigh Whitinger, “From Confusion to Clarity“, DVjs 54 (1980), 258–83, here: 262–3. The opposition between realistic and fantastic/mythological tendencies in the narrative is the focus of
Clemens Heselhaus, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff Leben und Werk, Düsseldorf 1971, 159–65; William H. McClain, “Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s ‘Die Judenbuche’ als Kriminalgeschichte“, ZfdPh 99, 49–70; Helmut Koopmann, “Die Wirklichkeit des Bösen in der ‘Judenbuche’“, ZfdPh 99, 71–85; Wittkowski, “Das Rätsel der ‘Judenbuche’ und seine Lösung: Religiöse Geheimsignale”, Sprachkunst 16 (1985), 175–192; Walter Silz, Realism and Reality. Studies in the German Novel of Poetic Realism, Chapel Hill 1954, 36–51; and
Betty Nance Weber, “Droste’s Judenbuche: Westphalia in International Context“, The Germanic Review 50 (1975), 203–212. The controversial status of Friedrich’s suicide and the theme of justice will be discussed at length in this essay, and previous commentary will be cited as it becomes relevant.
A reading of Die Judenbuche similar to mine–especially in its emphasis on the issues of magic and retribution–was sketched out by Immerwahr in a presentation at the 1991 International Congress of Germanists in Tokyo. One task of this essay is to pursue this line of interpretation in greater detail and strengthen the argument with contextual information from the period. See „‘Die Judenbuche’ als Gewebe von Begegnungen mit dem Fremden“, in: Eijiro Iwasaki (Ed.), Akten des VIII. internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses 11, Munich 1991, 137–146, here: 144.
Sander Gilman, Difference and Pathology. Stereotypes of Sexuality, Race and Madness, Ithaca 1985, 16–21.
Most theorists draw a distinction between Enlightenment-based civic nationalism, tied to a particular form of state and associated with England, France and the US, and romantic nationalism, which is based on the assumption of cultural-ethnic essentialism and is associated with Germany and eastern Europe. See E.J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism. Programme, Myth and Reality, Cambridge 1983, 22; and
Rogers Brubaker, Citizenship and Nationhood In France and Germany, Cambridge, Mass. 1992, 14. The dichotomic, potentially chauvinistic quality I am describing is far more obvious in the latter, though certainly also applicable to the former. Nairn’s image of nationalism as having a Janus face–i. e. oriented both toward the past and the future–is comparable to the protean quality of stereotypes, and Anderson in the introduction to Imagined Communities provides a compelling argument for the religious roots of nationalistic ideology. See
Tom Nairn, The Break-Up of Britain, London 1977; and
Benedicht Anderson, Imagined Communities. Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, London 1981.
Anthony Giddens, The Giddens Reader, ed. Philip Cassell, London 1983, 295–299.
Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Werke. Historisch-kritische Ausgabe, ed. Winfried Woesler, Tübingen 1985–1988, here: V/2, 258–259. Cited hereafter with volume and page numbers as HKA.
The truth content of Haxthausen’s „Geschichte eines Algerier-Sklaven“ has been the subject of some debate in Droste scholarship. Michael Werner challenges the veracity of Haxthausen’s report in his article „Dichtung oder Wahrheit?“, Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 99 (1979), 21–48. More recent scholarship, however, has confirmed the basic accuracy Haxthausen’s Geschichte to known historical fact (see especially Horst-Dieter Krus, Mordsache Soistmann Berend. Zum historischen Hintergrund der Novelle “Die Judenbuche” von Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, Münster 1990, 29–43, 59–61). In any event the alleged facticity of Die Judenbuche is an important element in the author’s own contextualization of the story and highlights the importance of the changes she chose to make in it.
See Weber (Note 2), 205–7; and Heinz Rölleke, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Die Judenbucbe, Frankfurt/M. 1972, 11.
See Winfried Woesler, Modell fall der Rezeptionsforschung. Droste-Rezeption im 19. Jahrhundert, I, Frankfurt/M. 1980, 986–987.
The literature on the topic of Jewishness as a literary motif is immense, but for an overview see: Hans Otto Horch, Horst Denkler (Eds.), Conditio Judaica. Judentum, Antisemitismus und deutschsprachige Literatur vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zum ersten Weltkrieg, 2 vols., Tübingen 1988
Ruth Angress, “Wunsch- und Angstbilder. Jüdische Gestalten aus der deutschen Literatur des neunzehnten Jahrhunderts“, in: lbrecht Schöne (Ed.), Akten des VII. internationalen Germanisten-Kongresses Göttingen 1985, Tübingen 1986, 84–96; and
Herbert A. Strauss, Christhard Hoffmann (Eds.), Juden und Judentum in der Literatur, Munich 1985. Particularly interesting for a comparison of German and European treatments of the Jewish scoundrel motif are: Kurt Dittmar, “Juden und Judentum in der englischsprachigen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts“, in: Horch/Denkler, II, 35–51; and Frank-Rutger Hausmann, “Juden und Judentum in der französichen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts“, in: Horch/Denkler, II, 52–71. Die Judenbuche itself plays hardly any role in these studies: Angress doesn’t mention Droste at all, nor does the story come up in any of the essays in the Strauss/Hoffmann volume.
See Hartmut Reinicke, Gaunerwirtschaft. Die erstaunlichen Abenteuer hebräischer Spitzbuben in Deutschland, Berlin 1983, 49.
See Jacob Toury, Soziale und politische Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland 1847–1871. Zwischen Revolution, Reaktion und Emanzipation, Düsseldorf 1977, 371–381
Selma Stern, Der preuβische Staat und die Juden, Berlin 1925, 142; and specifically on
Westphalia, Bernhard Brilling, “Die jüdische Gemeinden Westfalens“, in: Eduard Hegel (Ed.), Kirchen und Religionsgemeinschaft in der Provinz Westfalen, Münster 1978, 106–141, here: 138. for a concise report of the situation of Jews at the time the story takes place and in Droste’s own day, see Karl Philip Moritz, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Die Judenbuche. Sittengemälde und Kriminalnovelle, 2 ed., Modellanalysen: Literatur 3, Paderborn 1989, 35–42.
See Reinicke (note 12), 45–59; and Rudolf Glanz, Geschichte des niederen jüdischen Volkes in Deutschland, New York 1968, 82–127. Numerous royal edicts were issued throughout the eighteenth century aimed at combatting Jewish participation in smuggling acitivities. For a detailed, if antisemitically tinged account of these public proclamations, see
Georg Liebe, Die Juden in der deutschen Vergangenheit, Jena 1924, 91–94.
One work Droste had read with great interest during the novella’s composition was Dicken’s Oliver Twist. See Walter Gödden, Annette von Droste-Hülshoff. Leben und Werk, Bern 1993, 273.
See Benno von Wiese, Die deutsche Novelle von Goethe bis Kafka, Düsseldorf 1967, 161; Godwin-Jones (note 2), 234; and Raymond Immerwahr, “The Peasant Wedding as dramatic Climax of Die Judenbuche“, in: Linda Dietrick, David G. John (Eds.), Momentum dramaticum. Festschrift für Eckehard Catholy, Waterloo, ON 1990, 321–336, here: 329.
See Strauss/Hoffmann (note 11), 10–11; Reinhard Rürup, Emanzipation und Antisemitismus. Studien zur “Judenfrage“ der Bürgerlichen Gesellschaft, Göttingen 1975, 24–26.
See Marcel Mauss, Theorie der Magie, in: Mauss, Soziologie und Anthropologie, transi. Henning Ritter, Munich 1974, 43–179, here: 56–58; and
Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, “Jews as Magicians in Reformation Germany“, in: Sander Gilman, Steven Katz (Eds.), Antisemitism in Times of Crisis, New York 1991, 115–139, here: 115–116, 125.
See Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder. Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany, New Haven 1988, 5–8
Hanns Baechtold-Stäubli, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, Berlin, Leipzig 1927, 811–813.
In addition to the works cited in note 29, see Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews. The Medieval Conception of the Jew and its Relation to Modern Antisemitism, New Haven 1945, 76–79.
See von Wiese Novelle (note 19), 170–172; Baechtold-Stäubli, Handwörterbuch (note 29), 954–956, 1692; and
Johannes Bolte, Handwörterbuch des deutschen Märchens, I, Berlin, Leipzig 1930, 206–216. Alone among recent critics, Doris Brett argues against an occult interpretation of the tree, treating it instead as an arbitrary external marker of Friedrich’s guilt. While not untenable, such an interpretation weakens the connection between the tree and the Jews.
See Brett, “Friedrich, the Beech and Margreth in Droste-Hülshoff’s Judenbuche“, Journal for English and Germanic Philology 84 (1985), 157–165.
See the various essays in: Klaus Koch (Ed.), Um das Prinzip der Vergeltung in Religion und Recht des alten Testaments, Darmstadt 1972, here: especially viii–ix. Figures no less influential than Schleiermacher and Hegel subscribed to this view. It’s worth noting here that such an understanding of Judaism is hardly accurate and may, in fact, have been based on mistranslations of Hebrew into Greek and Latin. On the topic of general anti-Jewish tendencies within Catholicism, see Sagarra (note 27), 272–275.
Paul Lawrence Rose, Revolutionary Anti-Semitism in Germany from Kant to Wagner, Princeton 1990, 57.
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Chase, J.S. Part of the Story The Significance of the Jews in Annette von Droste-Hülshoff’s. Dtsch Vierteljahrsschr Literaturwiss Geistesgesch 71, 127–145 (1997). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374600
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03374600