From Bildung to Reformpädagogik: Cultivating Self and Nation (Session A)
Subtopic: Education
and the Self
Session Coordinator:
Jennifer Ham
Department of Modern
Languages, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
“The
Pedagogical, Social, Sexual, and Narrative Perversity of Robert Walser’s Jakob von Gunten”
The
pedagogical situation depicted in Robert Walser’s 1909 novel Jakob von Gunten is a peculiar one: at
Institut Benjamenta, the servant’s school
in which the protagonist Jakob enrolls after fleeing his bourgeois upbringing,
“die Herren Erzieher und Lehrer schlafen, oder sie sind tot, oder nur scheintot,
oder sie sind versteinert” (the educators and teachers are asleep, or they
are dead, or seemingly dead, or they are fossilized). When the students do
receive instruction, it is repetitive and nonsensical and aims to transform
them into servants who perform their duties invisibly and silently. In contradiction
to the Bildung tradition, education
here functions to eradicate individuality. The pedagogical perversity of this
project corresponds to Jakob’s social perversity, epitomized in his decision
to act in contradiction to convention and renounce class privilege by attending
Institut Benjamenta with the goal
of becoming “etwas sehr Kleines und Untergeordnetes im späteren Leben” (something
very small and subordinate later in life). He also enjoys restrictions and
commands as well as the anger the disciplined student Kraus displays in reaction
to Jakob’s passivity and obduracy, means by which Jakob controls both the
school director and his fellow students. One might understand this strategy
as masochistic, for Jakob occupies a paradoxically passive, yet powerful position
in the school. Indeed, perversity inheres on the level of Jakob’s sexuality
as well. Besides the masochism Jakob displays in his relationships with Kraus,
the director of the school, and his mother, the novel also presents scenes
of voyeurism, prostitution, and Jakob’s homo- and heterosexual relationships.
His sexuality proves contradictory and elusive and, in this sense, particularly
queer.
The tensions and contrariness apparent in the pedagogical,
social, and sexual aspects of the novel find their equivalent in its formal
features. Jakob’s narrative takes the form of diary entries which have an
unclear and shifting temporal relationship to the narrated events, and he
often contradicts himself. He is at once narrator and protagonist and, as
such, provides an unstable and untrustworthy account. Jakob both attempts
to establish the reality of the diary entries and makes direct appeals to
the reader of the novel. Taken along with the fact that Jakob von Gunten has also often been read as a parody of the Bildungsroman, these features add to the
shifting and ambiguous nature of the novel’s narrative and generic parameters.
Walser’s narrative style has been both criticized and praised as ambiguous,
at once ingenious and simplistic. One critic notes the preoccupation of Walser
research with resolving the “mysteries and secrets” of his texts. Yet ambiguity
and contradiction—what I term pedagogical, social, sexual, and narrative perversity—are
constitutive elements and function to postpone resolution and to keep spaces
of possibility open indefinitely. In this way Jakob von Gunten at once avoids and parodies the narrow constraints
of authoritarian pedagogy, class structures, sexual definition, and narrative
genre.
Darren
Ilett
"Schooling
Desire: Frank Wedekind and Turn-of-the-Century Pedagogy"
Frank
Wedekind, himself an enfant terrible
of German Expressionism, is cited for his general critique of educational
institutions in such adolescent plays as Frühlings
Erwachen and Mine-haha, yet
to date there has been no serious attempt to go beyond this generalist claim
to explore Wedekind's own pedagogical experiences, his involvement with various
pedagogical philosophies or the particularities of the cultural reality of
the national educational systems in Germany and Switzerland so pivotal to
an understanding of his plays. Indeed,
no other modern author revealed the shifting dynamic between Prussian
stereotypes and modernist vision and the
educative process by which bodies and souls are domesticated and made to bear
cultural meanings as poignantly and intriguingly as
Frank Wedekind and one of his biggest inspirations, Friedrich Nietzsche. From
works, such as Frühlings Erwachen, Mine-haha and Erdgeist to
philosophical embodiments of the educated self in Nietzsche’s Zarathustra and Human All Too Human, it
is apparent that these writers were fascinated with dramatizations of becoming
and overcoming. For them man appears separated
by his rationality and bereft of his natural innocence, as Rousseau posited,
yet as one who, at the same time, seeks revenge on the resisting natural untamed
and uneducated state for its elusive promise of liberation. As they reveal,
theirs is an often violent pedagogy, one relying heavily on the ascribed essences
of instinct and wildness and tamed by the contemporary practices of schooling,
training and subjugation for their articulation, yet, especially for Nietzsche,
also a playful and creative dramatic capable of liberating the spirit. Such
pedagogical discourses are grounded in educational debates and cultural practices
in the nations of
Jennifer
Ham
University
of Wisconsin-Green Bay
hamj@uwgb.edu
“Classical, National or Modern? – Concepts of Bildung und Erziehung at the Turn of the
20th Century”
„Wir müssen als
Grundlage für das Gymnasium das Deutsche nehmen, wir sollen nationale junge
Deutsche erziehen und nicht junge Griechen und Römer“ are the famous words of Kaiser
Wilhelm at the school conference in Berlin 1890, which show the tension between
classical languages and modern languages, as well as national and modernist
concepts of education in Imperial Germany. The newly established nation of
the Kaiserreich at the fin de siècle was facing
massive economic, social, and demographic changes. Different school concepts,
school laws as well as the curriculum reflect these developments. In the center
of this struggle stood German education and the subject German, which were
considered the counterpart of classical languages and education. An analysis
and comparison of German textbooks and a description of the canonical changes
allow an insight in the development of the struggle between these fundamental
pedagogical changes in Imperial Germany.
Former research of textbooks
and the curriculum of the subject German have focused on the early nineteenth
century (e.g. Beisbart, Erlinger and Knobloch, Rommel), the “Third Reich”
(e.g., Flessau, Hohmann, Lauf-Immesberger) or gave an overview (e.g., Frank,
Herrlitz, Krumbach, Matthias). There is no research on developments of classical
and modern education given through an analysis of German textbooks and the
subject German in Imperial Germany. My study includes the reflection of pedagogical
beliefs in German canonical texts, including political statements as well
as school laws. Key questions are: How are theoretical concepts of a modern,
classical or national education represented in the curriculum of the subject
German? Do they represent the historical background? Which canonical changes
are detectable in German textbooks? Are there alterations or continuities?
With this approach I am able to provide an overview of concepts of Bildung
und Erziehung in Imperial Germany as well as an important insight into
the tension between modern and classical education at the turn of the century.
Martina Lüke
MARTINA.LUKE@uconn.edu
From Bildung to Reformpaedagogik:
Cultivating Self and Nation
(Session B)
Subtopic: German
Education and the State
Session Coordinator:
Jennifer Ham
Department of Modern
Languages, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
“Sozialistische Bildungskonzepte in der DDR und deren literarisch-künstlerische
Verarbeitung bis in die Gegenwart“
Bildung und Erziehung in der ehemaligen DDR entsprachen allgemein
umrissen dem Konzept von der Entwicklung der sogenannten sozialistischen
Persönlichkeit. Diese staatsgesteuerte Bildungspolitik begann bereits vor
dem regulären Schulunterricht in den Einrichtungen der Kindertagesstätten.
Widergespiegelt ist diese Erziehungsstrategie so z.B. in Kinderliedern und
–literatur. Schulbildung selbst beinhaltete
unter anderem eine militärische Grunderziehung, die bis in die höheren Bildungeinrichtungen
der Universitäten und Hochschulen den offiziellen Wehrunterricht einschloß.
Literatur- und Geschichts-, bzw. Staatsbürgerunterricht dienten der Verbreitung
ideologischer Grundkonzepte der Staatspartei SED. Politikerziehung reichte
vom regulären Unterricht bis hin zur organisierten Agitation im außerschulischen
Bereich. Diese umschriebene Bildungspolitik der DDR-Regierung fand natürlich
ihren Niederschlag in einer Reihe von literarischen Texten, von denen einige
den Kanon der ostdeutschen Literatur über Jahre hinweg bestimmten. Zu erwähnen
sei hier unter anderem Hermann Kants Roman “Die Aula”. Dabei kann ein durchaus
kritischer Umgang mit dem Bildungssystem vor allem in den 70er Jahren beobachtet
werden. Man denke hier z.B. an Ulrich Plentzdorfs “Die neuen Leiden des
jungen Werther”. Auch nach dem Ende der DDR setzte sich eine Auseinandersetzung
mit dem Phänomen sozialistischer Schulalltag in Literatur und Film fort.
In Nachwendetexten wird vor allem eine ironisch-satirische Tonart angeschlagen,
wobei dabei die Frage nach der eigenen Vergangenheit und Identität eine
vorrangige Aufgabe zu erfüllen scheint. Einige Beispiele für diese Literatur
sind unter anderem Texte von Jana Hensel, Jakob Hein, Claudia Rusch, Thomas
Brussig und natürlich Kinohits wie “Sonnenallee”, “Good Bye Lenin” und andere.
In meinem Vortrag werde ich zunächst
eine theoretische Einführung zum Bildungskonzept in der DDR geben, um daran
anschließend die literarische und mitunter filmische Verarbeitung der Problematik
von Bildung und Erziehung in Ostdeutschland zu erläutern und an einigen
ausgewählten Texten vorzustellen. Dabei werde ich meine Untersuchung mit
Texten der Nachwendezeit bis in die unmittelbare Gegenwart fortsetzen, um
aufzuzeigen, welche Macht politisch-ideologische Bildung und Erziehung auch
nach Ende des Diktaturstaates spielen kann. Fragen nach persönlicher Identität
sowie Identifikation und Abgrenzung spielen dabei eine herausragende Rolle,
sowie die Rolle von Literatur und anderer populärer Kunstformen als Reaktion
zur politischen Alltagsrealität wird mit Hilfe von Beispieltexten, -filmen
herausgearbeitet.
Monika Hohbein-Deegen
Örtlich betäubt among Grass's Variations
on the German Bildungsroman
By examining Örtlich betäubt (1969)
alongside other prose works published over a period of 43 years, this presentation
explores the multifarious ways in which Günter Grass adapted the Bildungsroman, employing
representations of education and identity formation as national metaphors.
Here I draw upon studies of the canonization of the Bildungsroman as
a German national genre (Jürgen Jacobs, Todd Kontje, Gerhart Mayer, and Jeffrey
Sammons) and analyses of the narrative construction and negotiation of national
identity (Benedict Anderson and Prasenjit Duara). Die Blechtrommel (1959) has been discussed widely as a picaresque
parody of the Bildungsroman
and an Anti-Bildungsroman.
In it, Grass appropriated the social authority inherent in the genre during
the Adenauer era in order to contest predominant West German discourse on
the recent Nazi past. With the publication of Örtlich betäubt, however, Grass moved beyond parody
to an experimental, earnest adaptation of the genre, which appears in related
form in Der Butt (1977) and Im Krebsgang (2002). Örtlich betäubt abandons formal allusions to the
canonical Bildungsroman
(i.e., the generally straightfoward account of
a male protagonist's realization of a pregiven,
inner potential through a series of life experiences and his subsequent
social integration, often under a mentor's influence) while nonetheless
using some of its tropes to explore contemporary problems affecting personal
and national identity formation. The novel
narrates the struggles of two middle-aged teachers,
who question their credibility as mentors because of their own damaged
enculturation processes under Nazism, and two pupils in danger of sinking
into an unreflexive political radicalism. By destabilizing
the pedagogue's moral authority, the implied author reinterprets the individual
Bildung
process as an ongoing, explicitly societal and national undertaking that
is embedded in history and in which members of all generations are invariably
implicated. This new concept of Bildung, I argue, corresponds to Grass's interest in the emergent
cultural nation, which he opposed to the prosaic realities of the two divided
German nation states.
Timothy B. Malchow
tim.malchow@valpo.edu
Heimat Revisited:
The Formation of German Identity in Hans-Ulrich Treichel’s
Short-Story Collection Heimatkunde oder
Alles ist heiter und edel
In his short story collection entitled Heimatkunde oder
Alles ist heiter und edel Hans-Ulrich
Treichel reminisces about his former Heimat in a small town in Ostwestfalen, a place of alleged comfort and security. Yet,
as he delves into his memory he realizes that Heimat for him is not tied to feelings
of genuine belonging – he remembers his home town as an incredibly ugly
place, devoid of “rivers and forests, market places and churches, castles
and mountains, alleyways and nooks” – in short devoid of everything that
his homeland, according to his former Heimatkunde teacher, is supposed to harbour. Trapped among
the villagers who display the same ossified spirit that is characteristic
of Ostwestfalen, the narrator’s homeland turns into a nightmare
causing unbearable lethargy and the constant urge to leave home behind in
order to escape its suffocating atmosphere.
Interestingly
enough, it is the very subject of ‘Heimatkunde’, a subject specifically geared toward the teaching
and discovering of the beauty of one’s Heimat, that eventually leads to a fundamental break with the home
of the narrator. Instead of instilling feelings of pride or love for Ostwestfalen, and, on a larger scale, for the German fatherland,
the rather racist accounts of the Heimatkunde teacher evoke a sense
of utter disappointment and despair in the young narrator. For him, the
Externsteine or
the statue of Hermann – places that are visited during class time on countless
occasions – do not represent the epitome of Germanness
and thus do not symbolize the inferiority of other nations but expose the
still nationalistic mind-set of the Ostwestfalens
in a shocking way. Hence, in Treichel’s Heimatkunde, we
certainly find a story of a young boy’s awakening, an awakening that clearly
sees through the doubtful attempt to redeem the German Heimat by reviving some of the old
Nazi propaganda of ostracizing and discriminating. Even though not a Bildungsroman in
its classical form, the twelve short stories - loosely connected with one
another - depict the continuous emancipation of the narrator from the nationalistic
ideology of his home village. This paper intends to examine the role Heimatkunde
plays in turning the narrator away from his home and instilling in him a
sense of caution about Ostwestfalen as well as
about the German nation as a whole.
Gabriele Eichmanns
eichegabi@hotmail.com