Performative Geschichtsschreibung. Forster, Herder, Schiller, Archenholz und die Brüder Schlegel by Von Stephan Jaeger (review)

This is an advanced, detailed study; a great deal of work has gone into it. In the first part, Jaeger attempts to outline and specify what he means by “performative historical writing.” The bulk of the book is then given to the application of the theoretical category to five (six, counting both Schlegels) German historians of the final quarter of the eighteenth century, considered by Jaeger to be a key period in the development of performative historiography. The work is free of errors; the careful list of works used is not matched for utility by the skimpy index of names.

The reference to “performative” is bound to raise questions. These are only partially answered by Jaeger’s discussion. In the wake of Hayden White, the attempt is being made to provide an approach to the analysis of historians’ narrative style, without reference to external factors or elements such as description, reporting, analysis, or logical deduction. At issue is how history, the historical process, is dramatized or staged in order to make it active and present in a text. A brief review does not give opportunity to engage with the difficulties that remain unresolved. When historians are not eye witnesses, and even if they are as with Forster or Archenholz, it remains elusive how they should be able to meet the requirements of truthfulness when introducing explicitly undocumented materials. Here and elsewhere Jaeger declines to take seriously the change over time and cultures of the constituents of performance, such as theatres, staging, acting, or reception. Perhaps the recent work of anthropologically sensitized historians such as Michael Taussig (Mimesis and Alterity, 1993) or Greg Dening (Performances, 1996) could have been helpful, at least as provocations.

A series of case studies follows the introduction. These are of Georg Forster, Johann Gottfried Herder, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz, and Friedrich and August Wilhelm Schlegel. Although the individuals appear in chronological order, they are not presented as a connected whole. For each, Jaeger concentrates on one or two episodes in one or two texts. He is a close reader. Just what “performing” is varies, from the staging of Europe by Herder to Schiller’s view of coincidence (Zufall), or of Prussian courage by Archenholz. The concluding chapter on the Schlegels comes up somewhat empty, as there is admittedly not much that is performative in the sets of lectures examined.

This book has the whiff of a Habilitation thesis. A difficult problem has been examined around a set of wide-ranging texts, with extensive reference to the secondary literature. It is clearly written, but the footnotes can be annoying, both in their detail and when they argue. A few more pages in conclusion would have been welcome.