Table Of ContentOUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 30/05/16, SPi
No Hamlets
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No Hamlets
German Shakespeare from Nietzsche
to Carl Schmitt
aNdreas Höfele
1
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3
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for Gabriele
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Preface
as a German shakespeare scholar, I never felt much drawn to the subject of
shakespeare in Germany. apart from a few occasional papers I stayed clear of it.
What changed my mind—apart from a brief but intense encounter with a
Nietzschean passage on shakespeare while working on a previous book—was the
resurrection of Carl schmitt’s all but forgotten Hamlet essay from the 1950s in
english translation in 2009. schmitt’s Hamlet or Hecuba: The Intrusion of the Time
into the Play, though remarkable enough in itself, was made even more remarkable
to me by its modern anglo-american readers’ inclination to detach—or ‘reclaim’—
it from its author’s political history, notably his involvement in the Third reich.
This struck me as a problematic effort to occlude ‘the intrusion of the time’, the
very thing which schmitt makes the sine qua non of tragedy itself and Hamlet in
particular. There was, I felt, a need to supply what was being occluded: the ‘form
and pressure’ of the time (Ham. 3.2.22) which had shaped schmitt’s essay and
mindset.
from this grew the larger project of this book, the plan to explore the role of
shakespeare in the writings and thought of right-wing intellectuals from the
founding of the German empire in 1871 to the ‘Bonn republic’ of the Cold War
era. despite its obvious relevance to Germany’s calamitous twentieth-century
history, this strand of German shakespeare reception had not been treated in a
sustained book-length study before.
Beginning with friedrich Nietzsche, the chapters that follow trace the trajectory
of the rightist engagement with shakespeare to the poet stefan George and his
circle (which included such critic-scholars as friedrich Gundolf and ernst
Kantorowicz), to the literary efforts of the young Goebbels during the Weimar
republic, to the shakespeare debate in the Third reich and its aftermath in the
controversy over ‘inner emigration’. I proceed from there to Carl schmitt’s Hamlet
book of 1956, and finally to the end of the post-war period and its shakespearean
epilogue: Heiner müller’s grand-scale production of Hamlet/Machine at the
deutsches Theater in east Berlin in 1989.1
But can we, in this day of postmodern diffusion, still usefully employ the blunt
old distinction of ‘left’ and ‘right’? more specifically, can we apply the label ‘right’
to a figure as elusively multifaceted as Nietzsche, or to Carl schmitt, whose largest
support group in recent years would no doubt define its own position as ‘left’ (or
at least ‘leftish’)? I would argue that indeed we can, so long as we do not overcharge
the term with essentializing assumptions.
as I use the term here, ‘right’ serves for orientation and is not meant to reduce
a variety of individualities to a single essence. across their very pronounced
1 müller clearly does not, in any sense, belong to an intellectual tradition of the right. for his
inclusion in this book see Introduction, section IV, and Chapter 9.
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viii Preface
differences, the authors discussed here do share a common set of views and atti-
tudes that is recognizably rightist, i.e. anti-egalitarian, anti-democratic, and anti-
liberal. Without exception, they condemn Western modernity and mechanized
mass civilization, upholding in its stead an ideal of organic culture. The roots of
the latter lie in an idealized past associated with the notion of Abendland (the
occident), the ‘old european’ heritage rooted in classical antiquity. Hostile to the
rationalist enlightenment and its universal humanism, these authors endorse hier-
archical, authoritarian models of state and society and strong, charismatic leaders.
They are elitist, although theirs is not an elitism that fawns on the aristocracy,
which they often despise almost as much as the philistine bourgeoisie. In this sense
they are not ‘conservative’; they do not seek to bolster or restore the old upper
classes.2 rather, they tend to see themselves as radicals—radically opposed to the
status quo but often harking back to a lost past for their vision of the future. When
they speak positively of ‘the people’ (das Volk), they generally mean the supposedly
homogeneous ethnic group that constitutes ‘the nation’, although the degree of
their national fervour varies considerably.
as late as 1981 it was still possible to maintain that the study of German
shakespeare reception continued to be dominated by friedrich Gundolf’s
Shakespeare and the German Spirit (1911), a teleological narrative that saw the
Bard’s inspirational power culminate in the twin peaks of Goethe and the romantic
schlegel–tieck translation.3 The rest of the nineteenth century was dismissed as a
period of decline. as rudolf sühnel noted: ‘[t]he eighteenth century continues to
be ploughed’ while German shakespeare reception in the nineteenth century
‘remains terra incognita’.4 although this assessment no longer holds today, it is still
true that for the late nineteenth and early twentieth century no narrative has
emerged of similar consistency to that of Gundolf. His influence remains palpable
even where (and precisely because) it is rejected.
I do not propose to offer an alternative grand récit here. such narratives—more
performance-focused or dedicated to the study of political appropriations of the
left, for example—are not only possible, but do in fact exist.5 The interest of the
one unfolded here is to probe shakespeare’s cooptation into the siren songs of
ideas and ideologies that proved disastrously attractive in German history. ‘[t]he
sheer extent and pervasiveness of shakespeare’s influence in Germany’, writes
2 political scientists have therefore objected to the term ‘conservative revolution’ as applied to
radical right-wing intellectuals in the Weimar republic. for a summary of the discussion: stefan
Breuer, Anatomie der Konservativen Revolution (darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft,
1993), 1–7. In everyday usage, of course, ‘conservative’ is often used in a looser sense, as a synonym
of ‘right-wing’.
3 see Werner Habicht, Shakespeare and the German Imagination (Hertford: International shakespeare
association, 1994); roger paulin, The Critical Reception of Shakespeare in Germany, 1682–1914: Native
Literature and Foreign Genius (Hildesheim: olms, 2003), 488–95.
4 rudolf sühnel, ‘Gundolfs shakespeare. rezeption—Übertragung—deutung’, Euphorion 75
(1981), 245–74 at 255.
5 Wilhelm Hortmann, Shakespeare on the German Stage, vol. 2: The Twentieth Century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University press, 1998). Cf. also simon Williams, Shakespeare on the German Stage, vol. 1:
1586–1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University press, 1990).
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Preface ix
roger paulin, allows us to speak of, ‘in Harold Bloom’s terms, a “shakespeare-haunted”
culture’.6 I do not map this haunting in all its ramifications and heterogeneity. my
specific, narrower focus is on the extent to which a ‘shakespeare-haunted culture’
informs the right-wing German intellect.
Central to my inquiry is the identification of Germany, the German national
character, or more specifically the German intellectual, with Hamlet. It is in this
recurring motif, born from the frustrations of the liberal-nationalist opposition of
the 1840s, that the supposed special relationship of Germans with shakespeare,
their proprietary claim to ‘our shakespeare’, found its most personal and at the
same time highly political expression. Identification with Hamlet by no means
waned in the decades after the revolution of 1848 but maintained a cultural and
political force well beyond the turn of the century. Yet there are others beside
Hamlet—Julius Caesar, for example, and Brutus. and there is also, quite unex-
pectedly, othello.
othello is something of a gatecrasher in this book. originally uninvited, he now
takes up a whole chapter. This is due to the help I received from Gerd Giesler, the
editor of Carl schmitt’s diaries from the 1920s. He not only alerted me to the fact
that the diaries contained dozens of references to othello; he also most generously
furnished me with the complete unpublished transcripts of schmitt’s journals,
thus enabling me to present here, for the first time, Carl schmitt’s obsessive engage-
ment with the moor of Venice. Chapters 5 and 8 have greatly profited from Gerd
Giesler’s expert advice.
Invaluable advice also came from dieter schulz, who read the whole book in
manuscript, and from Werner Habicht, robert Weimann, and Ina schabert, who
read and commented on several chapters. Before her much-lamented death, ruth
von ledebur accompanied the early stages of my work in progress with critical
support. I will always be grateful to her.
I am greatly indebted to Bastian Kuhl for his bibliographical research and his
untiring commitment in preparing the text for publication. my particular thanks
go to Kay Henn and tom minnes for their excellent language advice.
The time for this book to materialize was provided by an ‘opus magnum’ Grant
from the Volkswagen foundation and sabbatical leave from the University of
munich. I am deeply grateful for both.
I received helpful advice and support from ruth morse and peter Holland,
maik Hamburger, Wilhelm Hortmann, andreas Kablitz, peter marx, Heinrich
meier, oliver primavesi, peter strohschneider, friedrich Vollhardt, and Wolfgang
Weiss. Bettina Boecker provided a highly conducive working environment at the
munich shakespeare library. for opportunities to present work in progress I am
grateful to Brian Cummings, paul franssen, dominique Goy Blanquet, ton
Hoenselaars, Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, and richard Wilson. Three draft chapters
benefited from the scrutiny of the ‘Kränzchen’, a circle of my munich colleagues
and friends.
6 paulin, The Critical Reception of Shakespeare in Germany, 1.
