Hölderlin in der Moderne. Kolloquium für Dieter Henrich zum 85. Geburtstag Hrsg. von Friedrich Vollhardt (review)

Hölderlin scholars approaching this volume will experience a sense of déja vu, as both in title and to some extent in content (even in contributors) it exhibits significant overlap with the 1999 volume Hölderlin und die Moderne. Eine Bestandsaufnahme (ed. Gerhard Kurz et al.) and with several other collections on Hölderlin’s reception. The potentially distinguishing feature of this contribution, per Friedrich Vollhardt’s introduction (7–11), is its emphasis on “Paradigmen der Hölderlin-Deutung [...], die wesentlich zur Kanonisierung des Autors beigetragen haben” (8). But since neither Vollhardt nor the other contributors reflect on what canonization is or how it occurs, nor on what period is defined by “Moderne,” the volume’s specific contribution remains under-defined. Its concentration on the first three decades of the twentieth century (10) is, further, a strange choice for a volume honoring Dieter Henrich, whose work has driven perhaps the primary tendency in Hölderlin scholarship in the last 30 years: the undoing of the ideological readings of the 1910s to 1930s by way of patient, illuminating investigations of Hölderlin’s thought as offering a notion of subjectivity defined not by instrumental reason but by its quest for self-coherency.

Within this problematic framework, however, several of the essays make useful contributions. Oliver Primavesi’s “Empedoklesisches im Tod des Empedokles” (13– 41) looks specifically at which of Empedokles’ works Hölderlin knew (and how), but claims that Hölderlin’s tragedy combines Empedokles’ biography with two of the philosopher’s dramas to create a more accurately Empedoklean world-view than earlier interpreters. But this seems to make Hölderlin guilty of the conflation of Empedokles with his fictional narrators that Primavesi criticizes in other interpreters (19– 20). Vollhardt’s “Das Hölderlin-Portrat Wilhelm Diltheys” (42–59) surveys Dilthey’s interest in Hölderlin and its role in the rehabilitation of the poet in the early twentieth century, in particular Dilthey’s shift towards a more complex relation between life and work than that of the Romantic interest in Hölderlin. Gideon Stiening (61–79) presents Nietzsche as a central but problematic conduit to Hölderlin for late-nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century interpreters, even as later Nietzscheans remained unaware of Nietzsche’s late turn against Hölderlin (in the Nachlass) for having succumbed in the struggle between individual and society (72).

Christoph Jamme’s contribution (80–92) opens a trio of essays focused on the Georgekreis and Martin Heidegger, between which there is sometimes considerable overlap. Jamme differentiates between the Hölderlin interpretations of the members of the Georgekreis, in particular Gundolf, George, and Hellingrath, arguing Hellingrath commits less inaccurate mythologization than George or Gundolf. Hellingrath is, for Jamme, further redeemed by his attention to language and form in his rehabilitation of late Hölderlin (87); Heidegger, however, extends the mythologizing interpretations of the George school while leaving out Hellingrath’s concentration on formal shaping (91–92). Since the problems with Heidegger’s Hölderlin reception are discussed in the next essay, one wishes Jamme had instead offered more detail in outlining the differences between the Georgekreis members. Gerhard Kurz (93–113) continues in the Heidegger-critical vein, presenting the historical specificity both of Heidegger’s approach to Hölderlin (i.e., through George) and of the appeal of Heidegger’s philosophy in its cultural context. He also lays out the differences between Heidegger’s and the Nazis’ interpretations, as well as the similarities in their military rhetoric and quasi-religious language of “Rufen” (107–8).

Liliane Weissberg’s “Hannah Arendt, Martin Heidegger, Friedrich Hölderlin” (114–27) uses both thinkers’ references to Hölderlin to delineate agreements and differences between them. For Weissberg, Hölderlin is “nicht nur das ‘und’ einer Verbindung zwischen Arendts and Heideggers Interessen, sondern auch das trennende Komma zwischen der Frage nach der Bestimmung der deutschen Nation und der Handlung jedes...