Hermann und Dorothea in the Context of Kant and Voß: A Question of Peace and Patriarchy

IRMGARD WAGNER Hermann und Dorothea in the Context of Kant and Voß: A Question of Peace and Patriarchy THEYEAR 1795 SAWTHE PUBLICATION of two texts by two eminent figures of the day, Immanuel Kant and Johann Heinrich Voß. One of the texts.Voß's narrative poem, Luise:Ein ländliches Gedicht in drei Idyllen, has long been recognized as part of the context oÃ- Hermann und Dorothea, written in 1796/97. But, as Friedrich Sengle argued in 1981, Goethe scholarship has severely neglected the role of the Vossian model, limiting the view to parodie aspects of its idyllic character. 1ThC other text, Kant's short treatise, Zum ewigen Frieden: Ein philosophischer Entwurf, has not been addressed in Hermann und Dorothea criticism.Yet, no matter how we evaluate the controversial final speech of Goethe's titular hero, Hermann, "Frieden" is literally the last word of the poem.2 Syntax and context place this last word in question, at the focus of a hypothesis in the subjunctive mode. In question are the conditions which might make peace possible, where peace means not just a cessation of hostilities, but the enduring basis of happiness ("erfreuten") for all, particularly including, of course, a happy future for the just betrothed couple: Und gedächte jeder wie ich, so stünde die Macht auf Gegen die Macht, und wir erfreuten uns alle des Friedens. (IX, 317f.) Peter Morgan has raised the strongest objection to Hermann's solution of achieving peace through war, calling it "perverse."3 Readers of Kant's treatise would have to judge it patently absurd, flying in the face of what Kant castigates as the most pernicious factor in the seemingly eternal life of wars: the single-minded focus on power ("Macht") of the European governments.4 Goethe most certainly was one of these readers, and in Hermann und Dorothea we can hear him playing with and on Kant's text just as he plays with a host of Goethe Yearbook 167 other pre-texts. Waltraud Wiethölter, in her comments in the Deutscher Klassiker Verlag edition of 1994, has displayed Goethe's rich allusive game with past and present literature, myth, legend, and history. The point of it all, Wiethölter concludes, is, precisely, playing the game: at a moment in history when radical, revolutionary changes are on the horizon, Goethe offers a textual exercise to practice change.5 In line with her formalist approach, however, Wiethölter does not specify the kind of change envisioned. This reading will pursue an aspect of change which Kant's treatise might have inspired. It is a question paralleling Kant's transcendental inquiry after the conditions of existence of peace, namely: how the world as we know it needs to change in order to enable peace, in order to make possible, in a wonderfully poetic Iphigenian definition, mankind's divinely intended enjoyment of life.6 A first step will look at relevant features of Kant's treatise. A second step will consider the picture of "the world as we know it" presented in Voß's Luise.The third part of the article will explore Hermann und Dorothea's strategy of changing this world. Context can be expected to play a more significant role in a work composed in a short time than in texts hatched and revised over years and decades, which was typical for Goethe's major works. Goethe produced Hermann und Dorothea with amazing speed, amazing Schiller, for one, who witnessed the first weeks of writing and wrote to Körner: "Die Ausführung ... ist mit einer mir unbegreiflichen Leichtigkeit und Schnelligkeit vor sich gegangen, so daß er neun Tage hintereinander jeden Tag über anderthalb hundert Hexameter niederschrieb" (28 October 1796). Fed with creative energy left over from the arduous completion of Wilhelm Meisterin summer 1796, Hermann und Dorothea was substantially finished in six months. The starting date of 11 September 1796, at Jena, could not but highlight thoughts of war and peace. After anxious months of worries over the French invasion of Frankfurt, where Goethe's mother still lived, the diary records a coincidence of text and event: "Nachricht daß Franckf. am 8ten von den Franzosen verlassen sey. Wieland ging durch Jena...