Zurich literary dispute (Staiger)
The Zurich literary controversy was a controversy surrounding a speech by Emil Staiger on December 17, 1966 , in which Max Frisch , in particular , viewed modern literature as a blanket denigration.
Course of discussion
Staiger's speech
The starting point for the dispute was the acceptance speech given by the Zurich Germanist and main advocate of the work-immanent interpretation , Emil Staiger , at the award of the City of Zurich's Literature Prize on December 17, 1966. Werner Weber , the head of the Feuilleton of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) held.
Under the title Literature and Public , Staiger first recalled the sentence Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae from the Ars poetica des Horace (“The poets either want to use or delight”), and then reproach modern literature for serving more socially or political ideas and thus lose their “real, convincing language that has survived the changing times”. Staiger commented on the consequences: "So we see in the ' littérature engagée ' only a degeneration of the will to community that inspired poets of bygone days."
Staiger asked whether the individuality that expresses itself poetically is worthy of admiration, and with reference to Friedrich Schiller replied that there is a basic will to community and that the poet adopts basic moral concepts of justice , truth and measure must confess. He saw this will threatened in contemporary works:
“Go through the subjects of the newer novels and plays. They are teeming with psychopaths , existences that are dangerous to the public, with great horrors and sophisticated perfidies. They play in light-shy rooms and demonstrate a blooming imagination in everything that is mean. "
If you start to admire “only the unusual, the unique, the interesting as such, the path inevitably leads over the unusual, the precious to the bizarre, the grotesque and on to the criminal and sick, to the sick and criminal, which is not a contradiction in our imagination evokes a well-turned out, higher existence, which should rather be tasted for its own charms and is mostly also tasted ”. He alluded to Peter Weiss without giving his name and as the only example :
"If a well-known playwright who brings Auschwitz to the stage has achieved worldwide success in a play written earlier with Marquis de Sade as heroes , we assume that here and there he has taken into account the tremendous power of the hideous on today's audience and Of course it doesn't miscalculate. "
Staiger criticized the passive attitude of the " philistines ", who applauded excesses, the mere mention of which they would otherwise be forbidden, and remarked: "Literature, like any art, does not deserve our respect as such." As great poets, all of He called Homer , Sophocles , Virgil , Dante , Shakespeare , Corneille , Racine , Goethe , Schiller, Archilochus , Petrarca , Keats , Leopardi , Rilke , but also Villon , Verlaine and Trakl . Staiger added to the last three names that he did not presuppose consent to the world that was found, but rather the "will for a possible human society based on the foundations of morality". In return, he accused modern writers:
“When such poets claim that the sewer is a picture of the real world, pimps, prostitutes and criminals represent true, unvarnished humanity, I ask: In which circles do they circulate? Is there no more dignity and decency today, not the high spirits of a selfless man, a mother who works quietly day after day, the risk of a great love or the mute loyalty of friends? All of this is still there. "
Nihilism and rubble literature are luxury items born out of boredom. No really harried man it could afford to be nihilistic, but probably he had an understanding of a "male, sung in deep distress hymn ". Finally Staiger appealed to the audience for a return to the values of older literature, "back to Mozart ".
The speech was first published on December 20, 1966 in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung .
First reactions
Hugo Leber opened his comment “In search of edifying heroes” on December 21, 1966 in the Tages-Anzeiger with the words: “Remorseful and penitent, I kneel in the confessional of my literary conscience. I confess: I took a liking to sewer seals. "
Leber criticized the blanket condemnation of modern literature without attribution and stated that the public of the elite that Staiger had conjured up no longer existed. A “ Philippika against modernity ” reminds of slogans from the time of National Socialism or from the Eastern Bloc .
The so-called committed writers would try to transform society into a community without fear. Leber referred to the plurality of subjective truths and to Albert Camus , Jean-Paul Sartre , Bertolt Brecht , Ernst Toller , Robert Musil , William Faulkner , Nelly Sachs , Paul Celan and Peter Huchel , who are at least as close to humanity as "beautiful" Literature of the past.
Werner Wollenberger paid tribute to Staiger's services on December 23, 1966 in the Zurich Week (Professor Staiger no longer understands the world) , but declared the “Staiger era” to be over. The speech shows that Staiger no longer understands modern literature and the world; he argues with a public that no longer exists and overlooks the long tradition of gruesome scenes in world literature. The lack of differentiation and the division into good and bad ultimately led to the “pyre for books”.
The strongly personal comment Finally one can say it again by Max Frisch in the Weltwoche of December 24, 1966 is generally seen as the climax of the literary controversy. Freshly accused Staiger of a stand trial against modern literature as a whole: “Conviction without calling out a name, of course without investigating the respective case. Volley! So, we remember, one always proceeded when talking about degenerate art . ”The speech would have been received enthusiastically , so Frisch continues, even in the times of Stalinism . In a long line of contemporary authors, Frisch was allegedly confused as to which poets might be meant. Finally, he expressed his horror that Staiger had now lost his previously vaunted ability to differentiate.
reply
Werner Weber tried to smooth things over in an article in the same issue, while Emil Staiger complained in a brief statement of December 28, 1966 that he had been deliberately misunderstood. With expressions like "terrifyingly", "not always, but often" and "in a surprising number of cases", he did not condemn modern literature as a whole. Express exceptions are Nelly Sachs and Paul Celan . A detailed listing of the incriminated authors and works was not possible for reasons of time alone.
Max Frisch's reply of January 6, 1967 criticized both answers in a cynical tone and accused them of perpetuating the practice of anonymizing opponents and vague statements and also leaving the reader of the NZZ in the dark about the discussion, for example only selectively reporting on the points of criticism. Werner Weber replicated in the same edition and, for his part, accused Frisch of inexact formulations and generalizations.
Further discussion
The further discussion was mainly devoted to the summary and analysis of the debate that had flared up and repeated the criticism regarding Staiger's choice of words and the lack of differentiation. More well-meaning voices regretted the form of the speech, but welcomed the approach in principle.
In the Basler National-Zeitung of January 15, 1967, Hans Heinz Holz made a connection for the first time to an essay by Staiger from 1933 in which he saw the book burnings of the National Socialists as "an indication of the dawn of a new, sane national community", and accused Staiger of failing to see “that the attitude from which he brands artists as psychopathic and criminal must lead to the cremation ovens at Auschwitz”. Further comments pointed to the continuity of argumentation and choice of words and contradicted the tenor of many early comments by stating that Staiger had not made a derailment, but "actually means it".
Peter Handke complained: "His speech is a variant of that inhumanity that so often prevents an understanding between people with the unreflected gibberish of a long-time-barred humanity."
Effects
Although numerous voices in 1967 had high expectations of the importance of the Zurich literary controversy, the debate had largely died down by 1968. In the course of the student movement in the following years, salaries were almost completely missing.
Later analyzes were mostly devoted to Staiger's person, but not to the hypothesis he had put forward as a scientific theory. The Munich Germanistenag 1966 is assumed to be a more important turning point in German studies .
The Zurich literary controversy is occasionally discussed as an appendix to a treatment of the work-immanent interpretation . The dispute is widely known as a media event, especially in connection with Frisch's involvement.
However, the problem was not limited to specific people. In his attack on the Zurich Germanist Karl Schmid in January 1974, Max Frisch once again defended himself against a state-preserving, community-oriented literature cultivation, which Schmid was able to represent as a professor, scientific functionary and high officer more impartially than his West German colleagues after the experiences of the Second World War .
Audio documents
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Literature and the public. A speech by Emil Staiger , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , December 20, 1966, No. 5525, sheet 5, morning edition (PDF; 9.67 MB)
- ↑ "In which circles do you circulate?" Neue Zürcher Zeitung , June 10, 2008
- ↑ a b Michael Böhler: The "new" Zurich literary dispute. Balance after 20 years. In: Albrecht Schöne (Ed.): Controversies, old and new . Vol. 2. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1986, p. 252 f.
- ↑ see Roman Bucheli: Dienstmann on many platforms of the nation. A hundred years ago, the Zurich Germanist and journalist Karl Schmid was born , Neue Zürcher Zeitung , March 31, 2007, No. 76, p. B1
literature
- The Zurich literary dispute. A documentation (= language in the technical age , issue 22), 1967, ISSN 0038-8475 .
- The beginning of a crisis. On the Zurich literary dispute (= language in the technical age , issue 26), 1968, ISSN 0038-8475 .
- Erwin Jaeckle: The Zurich literature shock . Report. Langen / Müller, Munich and Vienna 1968.
- Gerhard Kaiser: "... a male hymn, sung out of deep need ...": Emil Staiger and the Zurich literary dispute. In: Mitteilungen des Deutschen Germanisten-Verband , 47 (2000), Issue 4, pp. 382–394, ISSN 0012-1061 .
- Michael Böhler: The “new” Zurich literary dispute. Balance after 20 years. In: Albrecht Schöne (Ed.): Controversies, old and new . Vol. 2. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1986, pp. 250-262, ISBN 3-484-10526-7 .