Overlapping Aesthetic Perspectives as International, Revolutionary Space in Presentations from the German Revolution to the Spanish Civil War
Open Access
- Author:
- Nissler, Paul Joseph
- Graduate Program:
- German
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- October 13, 2006
- Committee Members:
- Daniel Leonhard Purdy, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Lisa Surwillo, Committee Member
Greg Eghigian, Committee Member
Bettina Mathias, Committee Member
Thomas Oliver Beebee, Committee Member - Keywords:
- overlapping
spanish civil war
german revolution
literary space - Abstract:
- In my dissertation, through an extensive analysis of canonical and non-canonical German and Spanish publications dealing with the German revolution and the years leading up to Spanish Civil War (1918-1936) and 1936-1939 respectively, I theorize an international concept of ideology, geography and time accessed through a metaphor of space(s). I demonstrate a common aesthetic space in literature between Spanish newspaper coverage, articles and poetry in La Acción, La Jornada, El País, and Solidaridad Obrera from 1918-1919 and that in German publications of Der Ziegelbrenner, Die Aktion, and Die neue Weltbuhne during the same period. I show a distinct aesthetic and political development and parallel between German and Spanish theater such as Brecht’s Trommeln in der Nacht (1919/23), Ernst Toller’s Masse Mensch (1922), and Federico García Lorca’s Bodas de Sangre (1931) with later pieces as Toller’s Hoppla (1927), Lorca’s La casa de Bernarda Alba (1935/6), Max Aub’s Pedro López Garcia (1936), Rafael Alberti’s De un momento a otro (1938/9), Ludwig Renn’s Mein Maultier, meine Frau und meine Ziege (1938) and Brecht’s Die Gewehre der Frau Carrar (1938). The novel is also a form whose development I expose from an historical novel in Ramon Sender’s Mr. Witt en el Cantón (1935), to Alfred Doeblin’s montage historical novel November 1918 (1937-1955) and finally Joan Llarch’s La muerte de Durruti (1973) and H.M. Enzensberger’s novelesque collage Der kurze Sommer der Anarchie (1972). A key to the aesthetic and political development and international parallel is a common presentation of geography (urban, rural, at the front), language, and identity as a revolutionary alternative to nationalism. Exemplified in publications of “Das Wort” and “El Mono Azul,” is a culmination of a ‘re-definition’ of commonness and foreignness, as opposed to nationalism, with a sharing of specific literary places and stories as well as sites of distribution, proliferation and audiences. My dissertation is a significant contribution to the broad discussion of literature and revolution and is unique in its comprehensive discussion of the German revolution, its spatial application in understanding aesthetic production as revolutionary, and the depth of the German-Spanish discussion of Spanish Civil War presentations.