'Ein neues, mächtiges volkstum': Eugenic discourse and its impact on the work of Gerhart Hauptmann

German Life and Letters

Volumn 59, Issue 3, 2006, Pages 405-422

  Dhúill, Caitríona Ní ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 43249165506     PISSN: 00168777     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.0016-8777.2006.00358.x     Document Type: Article

References (52)

1. R. C. Cowen, Hauptmann-Kommentar zum dramatischen Werk, Munich 1980, p. 36;
2. Eberhard Hilscher, Gerhart Hauptmann. Leben und Werk, Frankfurt a.M. 1988, p. 101;
3. John Osborne, Gerhart Hauptmann and the Naturalist Drama, Amsterdam 1998, p. 88. See also note 13 below.
4. Richard Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler. Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, Basingstoke 2004, p. 84;
5. Angelique Richardson, Love and Eugenics in the Late Nineteenth Century: Rational Reproduction and the New Woman, Oxford 2003, pp. 65-7.
6. See Walter Gebhard, 'Die Erblast des 19. Jahrhunderts. Organismusdiskurs zwischen Goethes Morphologie und Nietzsches Lebensbegriff' in Faszination des Organischen. Konjunkturen einer Kategorie der Moderne, ed. Hartmut Eggert et al., Munich 1995, pp. 13-36 (here p. 13);
7. also Laura Otis (ed.), Literature and Science in the Nineteenth Century: an Anthology, Oxford 2002, p. 13.
8. Klaus R Scherpe, 'Zur Faszination des Organischen. Eine Vorbemerkung' in Faszination des Organischen, pp. 7-11 (here p. 11).
9. See Die Lebensreform. Entwürfe zur Neugestaltung von Leben und Kunst um 1900, ed. Kai Buchholz et al., Darmstadt 2001.
10. See Richardson, Love and Eugenics...;
11. Edwin Black, War against the Weak: Eugenics and America's Campaign to Create a Master Race, London 2004;
12. Maximilian A. Mügge, Eugenics and the Superman: a Racial Science and a Racial Religion, London 1909, p. 8.
13. Ursula Ferdinand and Christoph Wichtmann, 'Vom Züchtungsgedanken und der Eugenik zur aktuellen Debatte um die Reproduktionstechnologie' in Die Lebensreform, I, pp. 575-9 (here p. 575).
14. Weikart, From Darwin to Hitler, p. 15.
15. A particularly eloquent - and at the time well-publicised - example is Henry Herbert Goddard's The Kallikak Family: A Study in the Heredity of Feeble-Mindedness of 1913 (electronic version, retrieved 22 September 2005 from http://www.psychclassics.yorku.ca/Goddard/).
16. See Alfred Ploetz, 'Die Begriffe Rasse und Gesellschaft und die davon abgeleiteten Disziplinen', Archiv für Rassen- und Gesellschaftsbiologie, Berlin 1904, pp. 2-26 (here pp. 2-3).
17. See Maurice Eden Paul, Socialism and Eugenics, Manchester 1911, pp. 6-7.
18. Francis Galton, 'Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims' in Essays in Eugenics, London 1909, reprint 1985, pp. 35-43 (here pp. 37-8).
19. Annegret Stopczyk, 'Ehe und freie Liebe. Zur Frauenbewegung um 1900' in Die Lebensreform, I, pp. 127-30 (here p. 128).
20. On the eugenicist aspect of Meisel-Hess's feminism, see Harriet Anderson, Utopian feminism. Women's movements in fin-de-siècle Vienna, London 1992, pp. 182-91.
21. See Ann Taylor Allen, 'German Radical Feminism and Eugenics, 1900-1918', German Studies Review, 11 (1988), 31-56;
22. Edward Ross Dickinson, 'Reflections on Feminism and Monism in the Kaiserreich, 1900-1913', Central European History, 34 (2001), 191-230;
23. Kevin Repp, '"More Corporeal, More Concrete": Liberal Humanism, Eugenics and German Progressives at the Last Fin de Siècle', Journal of Modern History, 72 (2000), 683-730;
24. and Lesley A. Hall's introduction to Marie Stopes, Birth Control and Other Writings, I, Bristol 2000, pp. xvi-xvii..
25. See Anderson, Utopian feminism, pp. 10-15;
26. and Marlies Janz, '"Die Frau" und "das Leben". Weiblichkeitskonzepte in der Literatur und Theorie um 1900' in Faszination des Organischen, pp. 36-52.
27. Isadora Duncan, The Dance, New York 1909, p. 20.
28. On the differences between the social-radical and conservative- patriarchal schools of eugenic thought, see Taylor Allen, 'German Radical Feminism and Eugenics', particularly 35-8.
29. Eden Paul, Socialism and Eugenics, p. 9.
30. Quoted in Barbara Ehrenreich and Deirdre English, Complaints and Disorders. The Sexual Politics of Sickness, London 1973, p. 72.
31. See also Dickinson, 'Reflections on Feminism and Monism', especially 223.
32. Edward Bellamy outlines this argument in his Utopian novel Looking Backward. 2000-1887 [1888], Cleveland 1945, particularly pp. 256-8.
33. see also Georg Simmel, Philosophie des Geldes [1900], Berlin 1977, p. 420.
34. Roy Cowen agrees with Philip Mellen's assertion that the novel belongs 'zur Gattung der Utopie im Sinne solcher "klassischen" Utopien wie Platons Republik' (Cowen, Hauptmann-Kommentar zum nicht-dramatischen Werk, Munich 1981, p. 113).
35. For a more differentiated approach to generic classification, see Joanna Jablkowska, 'Die Insel der großen Mutter. Utopie oder Satire auf die Utopie?' in Krzysztof Kuczynski and Peter Sprengel (eds), Gerhart Hauptmann. Autor des 20. Jahrhunderts, Würzburg 1991.
36. See Krishan Kumar's introduction to William Morris, News from Nowhere, Cambridge 1995, pp. xiv, xxi.
37. Morris thus anticipates Ernst Bloch's contention that eugenic theories for social improvement serve merely to distract attention from the more basic prerequisites to collective health: 'die beste Eugenik [besteht] vermutlich in guter Kost und Wohnung, in ungetrübter Kindheit'. Eugenic practices, where decoupled from a revolutionary agenda, represent for Bloch a 'kapitalistische Lust, rein medizinisch in den sozialen Knoten zu schneiden'. Ernst Bloch, Das Prinzip Hoffnung [written 1938-1947, revised 1953 and 1959], Frankfurt a.M. 1985, II, pp. 532, 542.
38. Samuel Butler, Erewhon [revised edition, 1901], New York 2002, p. 31.
39. Hilscher, Gerhart Hauptmann. Leben und Werk, p. 13.
40. Gerhart Hauptmann, Sämtliche Werke, ed. Hans-Egon Hass, 11 vols, Frankfurt a.M. 1962-74, I, p. 55. All further quotations from this edition appear in the main text as volume and page number.
41. Wolfgang Leppmann, Gerhart Hauptmann. Die Biographie, Berlin 1995, p. 127.
42. Repp, '"More Corporeal, More Concrete"', 701-2.
43. Ploetz, 'Die Begriffe Rasse und Gesellschaft und die davon abgeleiteten Disziplinen', 20.
44. Götz Müller, Gegenwelten: Die Utopie in der deutschen Literatur, Stuttgart 1989, p. 193;
45. Jablkowska, 'Die Insel der großen Mutter. Utopie oder Satire auf die Utopie?'.
46. Caitríona Ní Dhubhghaill, 'Modern Intersections of Utopian Imagination and Gender Discourse', Ph.D. thesis, Dublin 2004 (chapter three, 'Hauptmann's Matriarchal Robinsonade').
47. Claus-Michael Ort, 'Zwischen Degeneration und eugenischer Utopie. Die Funktion der "Kunst" in Gerhart Hauptmanns Dramen' in Gustav Frank and Wolfgang Lukas (eds), Norm - Grenze - Abweichung. Kultursemiotische Studien zur Literatur, Passau 2004, pp. 147-84.
48. Leppmann, Gerhart Hauptmann, p. 179;
49. Cowen, Hauptmann-Kommentar zum nichtdramatischen Werk, p. 85.
50. Galton, 'Eugenics: Its Definition, Scope and Aims', p. 42.
51. Ort, 'Zwischen Degeneration und eugenischer Utopie', p. 184.
52. Taylor Allen, 'German Radical Feminism and Eugenics', 34.