A Performance for Everyone? Othering and the Politics of Language in J.M.R. Lenz’s Die Soldaten (1776)

1 This essay is derived from a talk I gave at the workshop on “Canonical Pressures” hosted by the University of Toronto on May 26–27, 2022. I am grateful to the participants and especially to the organizers, Tanvi Solanki and Willi Goetschel, for their careful feedback.

Abstract

While J.M.R. Lenz has historically been considered something of an outsider in the eighteenth-century German canon, his play Die Soldaten has attracted interest from contemporary scholars due to its open-ended dramatic structure and sharp-witted social satire. However, the use of language in Lenz’s representation of a Jewish character, Aaron, in Act 3 of Die Soldaten is a stumbling block for many modern readers. The exclusion of the Jewish character from the Gentile community is underscored by the use of linguistic markers of Yiddish in the play, which resonates with Lenz’s thinking about “Jewish” physiognomy and language in a note he wrote to Lavater in the summer of 1777. Die Soldaten is a prime example of a canonical text that marks a voice of difference as noisy, “foreign” and other, as well as being excessive and abject. By taking an interdisciplinary and intersectional approach to Lenz’s Die Soldaten, we can bring the more uncomfortable facets of this text into focus, and interrogate our own problematic investments in the German canon since the Enlightenment.

Keywords:

• German Literature 1700-1799
• Author: Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz
• Title: Die Soldaten
• Drama
• Sturm und Drang
• Jewish Characters

Notes

1 This essay is derived from a talk I gave at the workshop on “Canonical Pressures” hosted by the University of Toronto on May 26–27, 2022. I am grateful to the participants and especially to the organizers, Tanvi Solanki and Willi Goetschel, for their careful feedback.

2 See Martin Wagner and Ellwood Wiggins, “A Note on the Translation,” in J.M.R. Lenz, Selected Works by J.M.R. Lenz. Plays, Stories, Essays, and Poems, ed. and trans. by Martin Wagner and Ellwood Wiggins (Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2019), n.p. On the critical reception of Lenz since the eighteenth century, see Alan C. Leidner and Karin A. Wurst, Space to Act: The Critical Reception of J.M.R. Lenz (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1999); Inge Stephan and Hans-Gerd Winter, “Ein vorübergehendes Meteor”? J.M.R. Lenz und seine Rezeption in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1984); and Hans-Gerd Winter, “‘Und mögen auch Jahrhunderte über meinen Schädel verachtungsvoll hinwegschreiten’: die produktive Rezeption Lenz,’” in J.M.R. Lenz, Sammlung Metzler 233 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1987), 112–182.

3 See Helga S. Madland, “Does Lenz Appeal to Women Readers in Particular and Why This Question Bothered Me, “in “Die Wunde Lenz”: J.M.R. Lenz Leben, Werk und Rezeption, Publikationen zur Zeitschrift für Germanistik 7, ed. Inge Stephan and Hans-Gerd Winter (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003) 389–400.

4 See Lenz, The Soldiers, in Wagner and Wiggins, ed. and trans., Selected Works by J.M.R. Lenz, 142–84; here: 161.

5 See e.g., Timothy F. Pope, The Holy Fool. Christian Faith and Theology in J.M.R. Lenz (Montreal & Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2003).

6 On the relationship between voice and othering, see e.g., Doris Kolesch and Sybille Krämer, “Stimmen im Konzert der Disziplinen. Zur Einführung in diesen Band,” in Stimme. Annäherung an ein Phänomen, ed. Doris Kolesch and Sybille Krämer (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp: 2006), 12–13.

7 On the biographical experiences informing Lenz’s Die Soldaten, see Elystan Griffiths, “Action, Communication, and the Problem of Form: J.M.R. Lenz’s Social and Political Thought,” German Life and Letters 59.1 (January 2006): 2–4. On Lenz’ biography more generally, see e.g., Martin Rector, “Der gescheiterte Lebensplan. Anmerkungen zu Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz,” Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 119 (2000): 9–23.

8 Griffiths, “J.M.R. Lenz’s Social and Political Thought,” 4.

9 See e.g., the discussion of language in Die Soldaten in Bruce Duncan, Lovers, Parricides and Highwaymen: Aspects of Sturm und Drang Drama (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1999), 137–39.

10 Lenz, “Über die Bearbeitung der deutschen Sprache im Elsass, Breisgau und den benachbarten Gegenden. In einer Gesellschaft gelehrter Freunde vorgelesen,” Werke und Briefe, vol. 2, Prosa, ed. Sigrid Damm (Frankfurt am Main: Insel, 2005), 775–76.

11 Lenz, “Über die Bearbeitung der deutschen Sprache,” in Werke und Briefe 2, 775.

12 See Lenz, Lustspiele nach Plautus, in Werke und Briefe 2, 5–286.

13 Lenz, “Anmerkungen übers Theater,” in Werke und Briefe 2, 669.

14 Lenz, “Remarks on the Theater,” in Selected Works, ed. and trans. Wagner and Wiggins, 285.

15 Lenz, “Anmerkungen übers Theater,” in Werke und Briefe 2, 670–71.

16 Lenz, The Soldiers, in Selected Works, ed. and trans. Wagner and Wiggins, 158.

17 Lenz, Die Soldaten, in Werke und Briefe 1, 211.

18 Bruce Duncan supports this assessment of Rammler’s motivations: “The soliders express themselves only in the most absurd activities, such as their senseless mistreatment of Stolzius. The intrigues of the officers Rammler and Haudy seem at cross purposes, and yet their ultimate goals are never clear. In fact, the significance of their cruel actions is that they have no purpose other than perverse amusement. As soon as the opportunity arises to make a fool of Rammler, Stolzius is immediately forgotten.” (Duncan, Lovers, 141–42)

19 Lenz, Die Soldaten, 211.

20 Ibid., 212.

21 Lenz, The Soldiers, 159.

22 Lenz, Die Soldaten, 212.

23 Victoria Gutsche and Gunnar Och, “Figurationen des ‘Jüdischen’ in fiktionalen Texten seit 1750,” in Handbuch der deutsch-jüdischen Literatur, ed. Hans Otto Horch (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).

24 Lenz, The Soldiers, 161.

25 Lenz, Die Soldaten, 215.

26 Lenz, The Soldiers, 161.

27 Lenz, Die Soldaten, 215.

28 Lenz, “Über die Bearbeitung der deutschen Sprache,” in Werke und Briefe 2, 777. My translation.

29 Lenz, Die Soldaten, 216.

30 Lenz, The Soldiers, 162.

31 Lenz, Die Soldaten, 216.

32 Roman Graf, “‘Die Folgen des ehlosen Standes der Herren Soldaten’: Male Homosocial Desire in Lenz’s Die Soldaten,” in Space to Act: The Theater of J.M.R. Lenz, ed. Alan C. Leidner and Helga S. Madland (Columbia, SC: Camden House, 1993), 42.

33 Lenz, Die Soldaten, 239.

34 Stephan and Winter, Ein vorübergehendes Meteor, 176.

35 Ibid.

36 My translation.

37 Lenz, quoted in Martin Rector, “Theoretische Schriften,” in J.M.R.-Lenz-Handbuch, ed. Julia Freytag, Inge Stephan and Hans-Gerd Winter (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2017), 226.

38 Gutsche and Och, “Figurationen des Jüdischen,” 26.

39 Hans-Joachim Neubauer, Judenfiguren. Drama und Theater im frühen 19. Jahrhundert, Schriftenreihe des Zentrums für Antisemitismusforschung Berlin 2 (Frankfurt and New York: Campus, 1994), 156–57.

40 See Katrin Sieg, “A Prehistory: Jewish Impersonation,” in Ethnic Drag: Performing Race, Nation, Sexuality in West Germany (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 2002), 29–72.

41 Rector, “Theoretische Schriften,” 226.

42 “Was die soziale Stellung der Juden in der zeitgenössischen Gesellschaft angeht, hat sich Lenz dagegen, wie die Soldaten-Szenen andeuten, offensichtlich durchaus seinen vorurteilsfreien sozialkritischen Blick bewahrt. Denn dort gehört der alte Jude Aaron genau wie die Bürgertöchter und der gehörnte Buchhändler Stolzius zu jener depravierten und ‘diskriminierten Minderheit’, derer sich die zynischen Offiziere als Freiwild und ‘Spielobjekt’ ihrer Streiche und Intrigen bedienen.” (Rector, “Theoretische Schriften,” 226)

43 See Lenz, “Die Türkensklavin,” in Werke und Briefe 2, 255–86.

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Mary Helen Dupree

Mary Helen Dupree is Associate Professor of German at Georgetown University. She received her PhD from Columbia University in 2006 and has published essays and monographs on eighteenth-century German theater and drama, gender and sexuality, performance history, literary declamation, and knowledge histories of sound.