Peter Höyng

Wiener Urbanitäten: Kulturwissenschaftliche Ansichten einer Stadt ed. by Brigitta Schmidt-Lauber et al. (review)

mass murder under the guise of the Holocaust, which is haunting because it is a reminder of the fact that many more men like Storms lived in postwar Germany and Austria and were not brought to justice, nor were their histories ever uncovered. In comparison to the larger massacre at Rechnitz, there was more of a reckoning with the past at Deutsch Schützen, because the victims’s bodies were found and Storms was at least still interviewed before he died. Th e failings of the postwar Austrian and German justice systems are as much a part of the message of this book as the fact that many of the victims have not been properly recognized. Unlike the killings in the Nazi death camps, the massacre in Deutsch Schützen and Rechnitz occurred on Austrian soil and were witnessed by local bystanders. Th e fact that many potential witnesses in Burgenland suppressed their knowledge of these crimes is every bit as disturbing as Storms’s inability to recall his actions. Th is book is defi nitely a valuable resource for any scholar interested in the fi nal days of the Holocaust, as well as any scholar interested in the murder of Hungarian Jews on Austrian soil. As there are fewer and fewer witnesses of this time period, Manoschek’s interview of Storms will undoubtedly interest scholars for years to come. Joseph W. Moser West Chester University

Der Notlicht-Skandal als Backstage-Nachspiel. Beobachtungen zu Bernhards Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige anhand von Hennetmairs Tagebuch

Based on the diary of Karl Ignaz Hennetmair, the essay re-examines the scandal around Thomas Bernhard’s second play Der Ignorant und der Wahnsinnige at the Salzburg Festival in 1972. Claus Peymann, the stage director, not only demanded that the theater should be dark, as Bernhard’s play states, but in addition asked to have the emergency lights completely turned off. This last-minute request escalated into a public scandal and ultimately led to the cancellation of further public performances at the festival. Contrary to common perception and official statements by the author, Bernhard showed a high degree of ambivalence toward this scandal. He was first and foremost concerned to pursue his own interests and career. Whereas Bernhard wanted in public to be perceived as decisive and in control of it, his reaction to the demands by Peymann and the festival director were at best half-hearted. The close analysis of the public outcry allows for dissecting Bernhard’s behavior vis-à-vis his artistic output, a knot that otherwise scholars seem to be unable to separate. In the end—and with an unintentional twist—the scandal actually mirrors the backstage-play itself.

Mephistopheles’ Flohlied Meets Beethoven’s Devilish Sting

Abstract The essay argues, first, that Beethoven’s attraction to Goethe’s Faust I and the Flohlied, which he read in 1790 at the age of nineteen, carries greater meaning than simply being an expression of sassy humour. Instead, Beethoven’s initial interest is best understood within the context of Bonn’s belated Enlightenment and its lasting impact on the composer. Second, the paper discusses Beethoven’s perplexing decision to include the incongruous satirical song among a group of six Lieder, published as op. 75 in 1810. And finally, it explores the question of why the ambitious composer never ventured further into Goethe’s most significant theatrical work.

Der Schein trügt nicht. Über Goethe (review)

important feature of being the redeemer of humanity, Zimmermann, who is aware of all this, rightly talks of Goethes anti-Christian turn. But since the fundamental sinfulness of humanity is essential for a hermetic worldview as well—it is manifested, as Zimmermann says himself, in the very fact that we have bodies—, Goethes Pelagianism is by necessity inconsistent with hermeticism. Why should we therefore not assume that Goethe abandoned the latter after adopting the former? All this is too bad because Zimmermanns book does have an incredible virtue, and I hinted at it by acknowledging structural similarities between many of Goethes works. It has to be emphasized that Zimmermann goes a long way toward describing an underlying structure in the texts of the young Goethe, and we can learn a great deal from his work. There is a very good argument about how central the concept of polarity is for Goethe at this early stage of his career, how its instantiations in motifs such as contraction and expansion, breathing, or pulsating control the metaphoric systems of many texts. There is an excellent exposition of the images of wandering, of the hut, of infinity, of self-enclosure. And most stunningly for me, there is an excellent attempt at showing how the motif of water forms, throughout a variety of texts, an astonishingly coherent metaphoric system. But unfortunately, these parts of the book are not easily accessible to the reader. They pop up here and there, but are never systematically presented in coherent chapters. Zimmermann has some really exciting insights, but unfortunately they are almost buried under his stubborn attempt at proving the impossible, the implausible, and even, for me, the irrelevant.