Winfried Sebald - A Place in the Country

In no other literary work of the nineteenth century can the developments that have determined our lives even down to the present day be traced as clearly as in that of Gottfried Keller. When he started writing in the Vormärz , hopes for a social contract were beginning to blossom, there was the governing of the people by the people still to be looked forward to, and everything could still have turned out differently from the way it actually did. True, republicanism was already starting to lose something of its former heroic character, and in many places those of a freethinking disposition were beginning to succumb to the narrow-minded provincialism and petty parochial concerns which Nestroy pilloried so mercilessly in his dramas. Johannes Ruff’s hand-colored caricature of 1849 showing a well-organized Freischar , a troop of volunteers setting out on patrol, is, after all, scarcely a testament to political radicalism. Only two of the doughty men portrayed here have brought their weapons along; one, probably to help keep up his courage, is carrying a bottle of schnapps, while the mouselike standard-bearer carries a ledger under his arm, and embroidered on his flag, as a fitting emblem for the entire movement, is a brimming jug of ale. The short man beating the drum in the center is the poet himself, in the guise of an oddly civilian drum major wearing

a top hat. Indeed, the whole scene has something distinctly unmilitary and buttoned-up about it. It is difficult to imagine that these five heroes are off to storm the barricades. Nor can it be a coincidence that the motto inscribed in the upper-left-hand corner of the picture reads “By the right, quick marrrrch!” The comic aspect of this scene, then, in a sense already anticipates the failure of the revolution. When Keller was working on the first version of Der grüne Heinrich [ Green Henry ] in Berlin in 1850, progress and freethinking had not been part of the Prussian agenda for quite some time. The bourgeoisie had relinquished their political aspirations, and from then on concentrated exclusively on their business interests, only engaging with the struggles for independence of other nations in their leisure time — if at all. Nevertheless, as Adolf Muschg has noted, from this north German perspective Switzerland could still be seen as “the last bastion of European progress” and as “the home of democracy, everywhere else misappropriated, betrayed and driven into exile.” Here in Switzerland, according to Muschg, “March had been followed by a constitutional May, and economic and political liberalism (otherwise to be found only in the United States and in England) had successfully become established as guiding principles of the State.” When Keller returned to Zurich in the mid-1850s and was able to study this exemplary society at first hand, despite unreservedly identifying with the principle of the sovereignty of the people, he occasionally — and as time went on increasingly — began to have doubts about the direction events were taking, even in a state in which personal and political freedoms were guaranteed as of right. Among the outstanding German writers of the nineteenth century, Keller — along with the young Büchner — is perhaps the only one who had any grasp of political ideals and political pragmatism and was therefore able to see that the gap between self-interest and the common good was growing ever wider, the emerging class of salaried workers was de facto excluded from the newly won rights and freedoms of the bourgeoisie, the term “republic,” as it says in Martin Salander , had become nothing more than “a stone given to the people in lieu of bread,” and even the middle classes were being dealt a poor hand; inasmuch as the more political disillusionment increased, so, too, in this phase of unregulated capitalism, did the constant anxiety as to the means of existence. Keller summarizes the history of the bourgeoisie synoptically, so to speak — from its fairy-tale and martial origins, via the age of Enlightenment, philanthropy, and the self-confident citoyen , right down to the bourgeoisie concerned first and foremost with the preservation of their material possessions — in the well-known passage in which the tailor Wenzel Strapinski, wandering around the streets of Goldach, reads in amazement the names on the houses. The Pilgrim’s Staff, The Bird of Paradise, The Water Nymph, The Pomegranate Tree, The Unicorn, The Iron Helmet, The Suit of Armor, The Crossbow, The Blue Shield, The Swiss Dagger: thus read the inscriptions on the oldest houses. Then, in beautiful gold lettering, come the names Eintracht [Harmony], Redlichkeit [Honesty], Liebe [Charity], Hoffnung [Hope], Recht [Law], and Landeswohl [National Prosperity], while the more recent villas of the factory owners and bankers bear whimsical names straight out of an autograph album, such as Rosental [Rose Valley], Veilchenberg [Violet Hill], and Jugendgarten [Garden of Youth], or names which seem to hint at a substantial dowry, like Henriettental or Wilhelminenburg . Our tailor with his pinpricked fingers feels very much a stranger in this small town, which the narrator describes as a kind of moral Utopia where the process of reification of our higher ideals and aspirations may literally be read from the walls and door frames of the buildings. The obverse of such prosperity, with its promise of happiness and enjoyment, so Wenzel Strapinski realizes as he stands at the crossroads looking back at the golden orbs on the towers gleaming enticingly through the trees, is freedom — so easily lost — but also work, privation, poverty, and obscurity. Specters such as these are everywhere in Keller’s work. Acquainted with hardship from an early age through the death of his father, in retrospect his mother’s meager housekeeping, essentially consisting of almost nothing save frugality, becomes the epitome of an existence reduced to the barest minimum. “The day after my departure, more than three years ago now,” writes the eponymous protagonist in Der grüne Heinrich , “my mother had immediately altered her domestic arrangements and very nearly reduced them to the art of living on nothing. She invented a peculiar dish of her own, a species of black soup, which she made at midday, year in, year out, day after day the same, over a tiny fire, which likewise burnt practically nothing, and made one load of wood last an eternity. She did not set the table anymore on weekdays, as she only ate alone now, to save not the trouble but the cost of washing the linen, and she placed her little dish upon a simple straw mat which always stayed clean, and while she dipped her worn three-quarters spoon into the soup, she regularly invoked the Almighty, asking him to give their daily bread to all, but particularly to her son.” The art of making do with nothing which Keller describes here seems halfway to saintliness, and almost has the makings of a legend. Nevertheless, as the subtle ironic tone indicates, it does not so much present an alternative to the now all-pervasive principle of the accumulation of capital as serve precisely to exemplify it, albeit on the most modest of levels. Keller’s critique of the economic system of laissez-faire was kindled by the fact that he was obliged to experience at first hand how what has been painstakingly saved up by means of self-denial is carried over to the next generation as debt, but it goes far beyond any personal sense of resentment and is, rather, directed at the dangers — growing ever greater in proportion to the rapid increase in money in circulation — of a universal state of corruption. The Ackerbürger [city farmer] leaves his inherited property and comes to grief in the city, where — as one can read in Martin Salander —land and stock market speculation, mortgages and swindling are rife, like vine weevil and cholera, and every day clever folk are made fools of by the dozen and fools made into scoundrels. The semiallegorical characters of Weidelich, Wohlwend, and Schadenmüller stand for an entire class which now, hovering between rapidly acquired wealth and sudden ruin, threatens to sink wholesale into a hitherto unknown form of criminality. Toward the end of the novel, Martin Salander tells the story of a man sitting in a barbershop who claims that while he was having his beard trimmed, no fewer than four good acquaintances passed by on the street outside, “each of whom at the present time had a relative in prison. That,” continued the barbered one, “was rather too many during a single shave. And yet he had not, by far, seen all the people who passed by because the barber had pulled his face, by his nose-tip or chin, to one side every moment. He had perhaps overlooked several or had not recognized them because the blue screen on the window obscured the figures somewhat.” Looking at this episode, we can begin to form an idea of the dubious state of affairs prevailing in Zurich at the time. The benightedness of the citizens alluded to here, like the grating in front of the windows, is ominous enough. If anything more sinister, though, are the effects of such rampant capitalism on the natural environment. The very first page of Martin Salander informs us of “the relentless building over of the earth,” so that one now seeks in vain “the traces of the old shady friendly paths which earlier had led upward between gently rolling meadows and gardens.” A little farther on in the text we learn that of the great trees which used to stand on the land adjoining the Salanders’ house, only a single plane tree remains. “What’s become of the many fine trees which used to stand around the house?” Martin Salander, returning after a long absence, asks his wife. “Did the owner have them cut down to be sold? The fool!” and she explains the matter to him as follows: “Someone had taken the land away from him, or rather forced him to make building sites of it since several other landowners had had an unnecessary street laid. There it is, every green shade has disappeared and the ground changed into a sand and gravel surface. But no one comes to buy the lots.” Whereupon Salander comments: “They are really scoundrels to wreck the climate for themselves like that.” It is almost as if one were reading a report from yesterday’s newspaper. Not the least of Keller’s achievements is that he was one of the first to recognize the havoc which the proliferation of capital inevitably unleashes upon the natural world, upon society, and upon the emotional life of mankind.