Der ganze Mensch—die ganze Menschheit. Völkerkundliche Anthropologie, Literatur und Ästhetik um 1800 ed. by Stefan Hermes and Sebastian Kaufmann (review)

This collection of fourteen essays enhances the scholarship on the emergence of the field of ethnology (Völkerkunde), as it consolidated itself in German-language writings around 1800. As the editors point out in the introduction, discussions of the “anthropological turn” have usually been within the fields of natural history and physical geography, and with an essential evidentiary source being the travel writings of Europeans. This compilation departs from this tendency by concentrating on the literary productions that resulted from the widespread interest in peoples outside of (and in some instances within) Europe. The imaginative preoccupation, if at times fascination and exoticization, with non-European societies and “cultures” (another word increasingly gaining usage during this time), can be found in the writings of some of the most canonical authors of the Enlightenment and Weimar Classicism, e.g. Goethe, Schiller, Lessing, Kleist, Kant, and Herder. However, what is also commendable here is that analyses of writers beyond “the usual suspects” are provided, and often with lesser known and understudied texts, some of which are not highly regarded as expressions of formal literature. Furthermore, since an engagement with the cultural imaginary remains the desideratum of literary analysis, the collection also stresses the relation between the mind and body (der ganze Mensch), as it simultaneously treats the traditional Enlightenment conceit of the universality of the human species (die ganze Menschheit).

A central theme that emerges in several of the essays relates to the appearance of a protonationalist sentiment, in which the question of the aesthetic remained deeply embedded. Sebastian Treyz demonstrates how Luise Gottsched’s Die Hausfranzösin oder die Mammsell (1744) functioned within the didactic comedic theater praxis of the times (das Lustspiel), whereby through the medium of laughter, clichés, and stereotypes about the French were mobilized to instruct and thus to valorize supposedly German cultural norms. As other contributions make clear, cultural barriers that are erected can often be difficult to sustain. Stefan Hermes illustrates this dynamic with the work of Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz, much of which also engages questions of national differences, in particular within European societies. In the case of Lenz’s farce Pandämonium Germanikum (completed 1775; published 1819), the call for the purity of the German language and culture, Hermes insists, is completely undermined by tendencies of hybridization that consistently creep in (114).

The issue of nationalist sentiment can be raised in different terms through an examination of Herder’s Volkslied-Projekt, (completed 1774; published 1778, preface, 1777) which assembled folk songs from different countries in order to identify the distinctive mentality of diverse peoples. Jutta Heinz illustrates how this endeavor to map a “geography of the poetic soul,” whilst on the one hand sought to provide a naturalistic basis for aesthetics, on the other still posed a challenge to the formalist emphasis of traditional poetic analyses that minimized the more popular cultural expressions.

Just as a central impetus of Herder’s project was to reconceive Rousseau’s schema of the origin of human societies, so too did Wieland’s model of cultural history purport to offer an alternative reading, one aimed ostensibly at uncovering the secrets in the hearts of humans. To achieve this objective, according to Michaela Holdenried, Wieland’s Beyträge (1770/1795) employed “ethnopsychological allegory” not simply as ironic dilettantism, but as well as a mode of “philosophical travel” into terra incognita, this given that the language to grasp the experiences of the Other can sometimes be inadequate (73). While the use of allegory provides an oblique manner in which to convey ideas, Gottlieb Konrad Pfeffel adopted a more explicit approach with his poems on China in which he praised the virtues of the Chinese, especially their respect for elders, as being a model that should be emulated by all. Christopher Meid points out however...