The Poetry of Anton Schnack By Chris Waller, St. John's College Submitted for the Degree of D.Phil

263 Pages·2014·1.93 MB·English

The Poetry of Anton Schnack
By Chris Waller, St. John’s College

Submitted for the Degree of D.Phil., University of Oxford
Summer Term 2013
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Abstract I
Chris Waller D.Phil.
St. John’s College Summer, 2013
This thesis is the first academic treatment of the poetry of Anton Schnack (1892-
1973): his work is not well known, even in Germany. Methodologically the thesis takes a
combined literary, historical and biographical approach, exploring the complex and
sometimes deceptive relations between his poetry and the turbulence of his time. The primary
aim of the thesis is to show that Tier rang gewaltig mit Tier (1920) is a uniquely innovative
volume of war poetry which, to be fully appreciated, needs to be assessed against the
background of previous German war poetry and the development of the sonnet cycle. It is
placed in the context of Schnack’s other lyrical work, particularly of the three volumes of
Expressionist poetry which immediately preceded it and which themselves are analysed as
examples of a very powerful kind of Expressionism. Schnack did not publish his next volume
of verse until 1936, and three further collections emerged in quick succession between 1947
and 1953. These four collections are examined in detail in the context of Schnack’s decision
to stay in southern Germany and to maintain a consistently low profile.
The thesis begins with a general introduction to Schnack’s life and work and makes
specific reference to his contemporary and current standing among literary historians and
critics. Chapter Two focuses on the three volumes of Expressionist verse and documents the
cultural circles which he frequented in Munich and the numerous Expressionist magazines
and periodicals to which he contributed. The next three chapters are dedicated to Tier rang
gewaltig mit Tier and examine it with reference to its poetic form as a cycle of sonnets and of
its merits and status as war poetry. The final chapter pays particular attention to Schnack’s
life in the Third Reich, situating the single collection he published during that era among the
literary works of Inner Emigration, before analysing his three post-war collections.
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Abstract II
Chris Waller D.Phil.
St. John’s College Summer, 2013
This thesis deals with the poetry of Anton Schnack (1892-1973). He is not well
known beyond the border of Lower Franconia, and even there his prose work rather than his
poetry is likely to receive fleeting reference. His gravestone in Kahl am Main, where he spent
the last twenty-eight years of his life, reads: ‘Anton Schnack Dichter des Expressionismus
und Meister der kleinen Prosa’. Poetry is the central focus of this study not only because I
wish to argue that at least four volumes of Schnack’s verse are of much greater interest and
significance than any of his short stories and novels, but also because poetry is often the
genre in which literary discourse is at its most intense, personal and revealing. For a while, at
a crucial time, he was near, if not at, the centre of intense cultural activity around a host of
Expressionist writers and publications in pre-war Munich and duly produced three volumes
of powerful Expressionist poetry himself. But the principal contention of this thesis is that his
volume of war poetry, Tier rang gewaltig mit Tier, henceforth abbreviated to Tier rang,
deserves considerable attention. It was indeed highly praised by some reviewers at the time,
but it has taken the strong advocacy, some sixty years later, of Patrick Bridgwater, with his
indispensable The German Poets of the First World War, and Hartmut Vollmer, Schnack’s
editor, to move Schnack’s name back before a reluctant public.
Between 1920 and 1953 Schnack published four volumes which certainly merit
examination, even if none of them succeeds in returning him to earlier poetic heights. His
literary career follows a familiar trajectory arousing considerable initial interest, though not
among such highly influential anthologists as Kurt Pinthus and Ludwig Rubiner, through a
long period of silence (in terms of published collections) to a phase, lasting almost twenty
years, of more or less innocuous publications. The aim of this study is, therefore, threefold.
First, it seeks to demonstrate that Schnack deserves to be taken seriously as an Expressionist
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poet. Second, it draws attention to the uniquely innovative qualities of Tier rang as a volume
of war poetry, focusing both on that volume’s formal features and its clear determination to
render justice to the realities of living and dying on the Western Front. Third, it makes a case
for a re-consideration of Schnack’s later poetry as a response to unprecedentedly turbulent
and subsequently catastrophic social and political circumstances in which writers could
hardly avoid addressing moral pressures.
Chapter One provides biographical information about Schnack’s life. Born in the
Lower Franconian town of Rieneck an der Sinn in 1892, he travelled widely in Europe,
especially in the 1920s, but he always returned to this part of Franconia and finally settled
there. Memories of happy childhood adventures in local rivers and forests fill all his poetry.
Key events in his life were the year he spent at Munich University in 1913, work experience
in Südtirol and a period of three months in 1915/1916 on the Somme and at Verdun. Injured
while unloading ammunition, he was invalided home without engaging in any actual fighting.
He subsequently published eight volumes of poetry, novels, collections of shorter prose
pieces (especially reviews and essays) and numerous individual poems in various magazines.
The silence which followed the early critical reception of his work persisted until the 1980s
when Patrick Bridgwater championed Tier rang. Some twenty years later, Hartmut Vollmer
edited his complete works. Otherwise, a few isolated references to his name can be identified
in anthologies and literary histories: he is highly praised (he is even compared to Wilfred
Owen), but then virtually ignored. Crucially, examples of his Expressionist poetry find no
place in Pinthus’s Menschheitsdämmerung, but the fact that a major avant-garde publisher
like Ernst Rowohlt, whose central role in publishing is outlined in this study, took up Tier
rang says a great deal for the merits of that volume. In his later years Schnack became
something of a local celebrity: family and friends still work hard to keep his name alive, but
even in Lower Franconia, at least beyond the confines of Kahl, he is overshadowed by his
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brother Friedrich whose name is much better known in the broader cultural circles of
Würzburg.
Chapter Two focuses on the three volumes of Expressionist poetry in which Schnack
assembled poems published in Expressionist magazines from 1915 to 1920 . These volumes
are placed in the more general context of a developing literary movement which, between
1910 and 1920, dominated artistic life in Munich and Darmstadt where Schnack spent some
of his formative years. His credentials as an Expressionist poet are established, and a detailed
account is given of the company of writers and artists in which he moved. At the time
Munich, like many other German cities, possessed a rich cultural infrastructure of cafés,
theatres, cabarets and art galleries which drew many famous names and helped to create a
subculture of subversive excitement and radical experimentation. The influence of Frank
Wedekind who spent many years in Munich is seen as particularly significant. Schnack’s
three Expressionist volumes become paeans to this suddenly burgeoning freedom which
manifested itself not just artistically, but also in the spheres of morality and sexuality.
Schnack came into contact with many of the leading artists of the day, but his own public role
seems to have been limited. On the other hand, he made numerous contributions to the host of
Expressionist magazines which were such an important feature of contemporary cultural life.
As a guide to Schnack’s Expressionist poetry I use the concept of the self, the lyrical
I, to trace its development from a dominating position to (by the final poems of Die tausend
Gelächter) less confident and assertive presence suddenly prey to doubt and fear. The lyrical
I’s needs and desires are intensely personal and are never perceived as society’s, let alone
mankind’s, and close analysis of the three volumes confirms Schnack’s status as an
Expressionist poet on the non-activist wing of the movement. Essentially the lyrical I remains
strong, finding a sense of renewal and freedom in frantic sexual indulgence and by
experimenting with fictional selves like the wanderer and the adventurer, familiar figures in
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the history of German literature. War, as depicted in Tier rang, immediately puts an end to
this role-playing: the lyrical I will be placed under intensifying threat.
Chapters Three and Four concentrate on the poetic form of Tier rang as a long cycle
of sonnets. The first of these two chapters defines the term ‘poetic cycle’ and outlines the
numerous advantages which accrue to any writer of this genre. It is not only a question of
increased coherence and stability, but also of the freedom to create visual and phonic patterns
and to explore the relationship between individual poems and the whole cycle. By taking on
this complex challenge Schnack is seen as inserting himself into a long history of poetic
cycles in German literature. In his case the form is perfectly suited to the task of documenting
the narrative of the further development and decline of the lyrical I. Tier rang is thus
analysed under three aspects – the cycle’s core idea or fundamental viewpoint, its forward
movement or narrative impetus, and the relationship of individual poems to the whole cycle,
its interdependence. The core idea of Tier rang is the conviction that war desecrates and
contaminates: Schnack is shown to make significant use of the verbs ‘entheiligen’ and
‘verderben’. The cycle takes us forward through the stages of a journey which ultimately
leads to what Schnack calls the ‘gateway of death’.
Chapter Four places Tier rang within the history and tradition of the sonnet form and
demonstrates that it is a sonnet sequence of a special kind. Dating from the thirteenth century,
the sonnet has proved to be an extremely versatile and durable form. It has traditionally been
regarded as a mediator of reconciliation, and so it is ironic that at particular points in its
development, particularly at the beginning of the nineteenth century, it has provoked
considerable controversy in Germany usually to do with the alleged corruption wrought by
Italian influence on the purity of German prosody’s bloodstock or with the rigidity of its form
as imposed and advocated by Gottsched and A.W. Schlegel. Only at the beginning of the
twentieth century, in Rainer Maria Rilke’s Neue Gedichte, was the rigidity of that form
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loosened. The apparent paradox that the sonnet was very popular among Expressionist poets
is explored before two of Schnack’s sonnets are examined in detail. The point is made that in
all accounts of the sonnet’s traditional purposes war is rarely listed in the inventory of
possible themes although several commentators have noted that sonnets have prospered at, or
immediately after, times of social turmoil and international conflict. The particular qualities
of Schnack’s version of the genre, especially the way in which he stretches the form almost to
breaking point, are identified and highlighted. In practice sonnets about war rarely dwell on
the reconciliation of opposing sides: in Tier rang the conflict dramatized is between the
diminishing military self of the lyrical I and the much more confident, vigorous self conjured
up by, and in, remembering happier times.
In Chapter Five the focus shifts from considerations of form to the question of content
in an assessment of the sonnets of Tier rang purely as poems about war and as a narrative of
the lyrical I’s abrupt development from a dominant figure revelling in unrestrained hedonism
to a tentative observer painfully conscious of the realities of service on the front line. Once
again Schnack’s collection is situated in a long tradition: reference is made to earlier German
war poetry, particularly, by way of contrast, to that of patriotic poets such as Theodor Körner
and Detlev von Liliencron. Tradition, it is argued, is used by Schnack not as a resting-place,
but as a springboard, while the poet endeavours to find a new form which will do justice to a
radically new content. This means detailing the physical and psychological pressures which
imposed themselves indiscriminately on all the combatants, demonstrating how starkly the
nature of warfare had changed even in the forty years since the Franco-Prussian War and
concluding that individuality and a sense of selfhood were further, and fatally, attenuated.
The increasing impersonality of First World War ordnance and the protracted nature of trench
warfare contributed to the apparently inexorable shrinkage of the lyrical I’s control over his
own destiny at precisely the moment when, after initial enthusiasm, belief in the rightness of
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the national cause waned. Schnack’s Tier rang mirrors these changes. In contrast to the
poetry of Körner and Liliencron not a hint of patriotism or nationalism attaches to his verse:
the individual soldier is shown to be without inner resources and without external support.
The cycle presents itself as a journey first by train, then on foot, to the front line in north-
eastern France: the sequence of events depicted in Tier rang may well mirror Schnack’s own
experiences, but powerful imagining takes over when it comes to the attack (launched on 21
February 1916) and being attacked, to a flight into the mountains of northern Italy and to a
descent onto a corpse-strewn battlefield. Close analysis of this final poem confirms that a key
element in this deeply impressive representation of a catastrophic phase of European history
is the extinction of the individual self. By the end the lyrical I is no longer present despite
vigorous endeavours throughout the cycle to cling to the consolation of personal memories
and constant remembering.
Chapter Six examines the four collections of poetry which Schnack produced between
1920, when Tier rang appeared, and 1953, when his last collection, ‘Jene Dame, welche…’,
was published. First, though, an account is given of his life at this time – his work in
Mannheim as a theatre-critic and reviewer; his travels to Italy and Dalmatia, to northern
Germany and southern France; the tension between a compulsion to travel and a yearning to
return home and, from 1945, the decision to settle for the rest of his life in Kahl am Main. In
the 1930s he led a reclusive life within the borders of his country and, later, his province,
avoiding the public arena, and, apart from one or two apparently minor skirmishes and low-
key incidents, keeping out of harm’s way. Continuing to play his favoured role as passive
observer he neither troubled, nor was troubled by, the authorities. By way of comparison, I
invoke the poetry of Wilhelm Lehmann, Oskar Loerke, Peter Huchel and Werner
Bergengruen. The poems of Die Flaschenpost (1936), the only volume published in this
decade, are analysed and found to be rooted in the tension between ‘Heimweh’ and
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‘Fernsucht’: the tone remains conciliatory and gentle. Divided into four sections, the volume
takes us through childhood memories of the Franconian countryside, family members and
local personalities, issues into paeans to the pleasures of travel and concludes with fervent
expressions of relief as the lyrical I returns home. I suggest that the poems of Die
Flaschenpost exist for themselves alone, susceptible only to literal interpretation, with
nothing beyond and behind them. Although many of the poems in this volume, and in the
later volumes, were published in Simplicissimus, very few carry a satirical or political edge.
The three post-war volumes rehearse familiar themes – the abiding devotion to
Franconia, reverence for nature, remembrance of times past – whilst, throughout, a resolutely
apolitical stance is sustained. With Der Annoncenleser (1947) and its extended version ‘Jene
Dame, welche…’, Schnack mainly rehashes verse written decades earlier, basing his poems
on advertisements as vehicles for releasing his imagination and his memory. Schnack thus
aligns himself, again in an innocuous way, with the ‘Gebrauchslyriker’ of the 1920s and
1930s. Both volumes present an engaging mixture of humour, whimsy and jaunty optimism
alongside sudden insertions of poignant commentary on the essential, almost existential,
sadness of the human condition. An impressive sensitivity is detected, in stark contrast to the
unrestrained sensuality of the Expressionist collections.
The final pages of the chapter reiterate the principal conclusions of the thesis: that the
three early Expressionist volumes are significant documents of their time and present
valuable versions of a certain kind of Expressionism; that Tier rang is Schnack’s abiding
achievement and deserves far more than the superficial attention which it has customarily
garnered; that Schnack’s demeanour and conduct in the 1920s and 1930s were paradigmatic
examples of a certain kind of Inner Emigration and that the later volumes also contain
sufficient human insight and sensitivity to warrant further interest. In sum, the overriding
conclusion is that, for whatever reason, the poetry of Anton Schnack in its entirety has been
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unjustly neglected and that his Tier rang in particular, occasionally invoked alongside the war
poetry of Wilfred Owen, merits the level and kind of detailed assessment invariably granted
to the English poet.