Unwrapping Goethe's Weimar: Essays in Cultural Studies and Local Knowledge. Eds. Burkhard Henke, Susanne Kord, and Simon Richter. Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture. Rochester, NY: Camden House, 2000.

Abstract

The 1999 celebrations of Goethe's two hundred and fiftieth birthday and the city's designation as Culture City of Europe give rise to this comprehensive look at the myth of Goethe's Weimar and the ways it has been packaged. Some of the most prominent North American scholars delved into archives and forgotten texts to reveal a troubled locus of culture, commodification, and ideological projection in which Goethe still remains the central figure but is no longer in control. The contributors have uniformly retooled their perspective on Weimar to take into account the pressing concern of class, gender, and sexuality. As a result, readers will continue to appreciate Weimar culture circa 1800 as a splendidly dynamic place, rich with social, political, and artistic energy, and still revolving around Goethe. At the same time, however, they will be made aware of the class and gender inequities that were a condition for Weimar's flourishing high and hybrid culture. The contributors to this volume reflect not only on canonical texts, but also on the ephemeral cultural production of Goethe's Weimar: skits and songs, hand-written journals and improvised plays, musical accompaniments and scribbles and drawings, lives aesthetically lived and only haphazardly recorded that together make up part of the everyday of Weimar culture. A prime example of Cultural Studies, this volume is a result of a quest for what was forgotten, concealed, revised, or transformed. Goethe's presence in Weimar thus receives new currency in explorations of consumer culture and the fashioning of bourgeois taste; of women artists and the market; of portrait busts and their display practices; of Anna Amalia and musical collaboration; of masquerades and cross-dressing; of Göchhausen and the Weimar Grotesque; of Goethe's views on soldiering and acting; of propaganda and attitudes toward human rights.

Praise

"To 'unwrap' means different things in different situations, or perhaps, rather, things are 'wrapped' to quite different ends. In any case, things don't 'wrap' or 'unwrap' themselves: they are 'wrapped' for a purpose and 'unwrapping' them always introduces an element of suspense, the expectations of surprise or joy, but also the possibility of disillusionment or dismay. Weimar and especially Goethe were always attractively 'wrapped,' but 1999 was the great Goethe Year, the year in which Weimar was the culture capital of Europe. An extra effort was expended to produce a tidy and attractive package, nicely done up to be attractive both commercially and culturally. All participants in the great event, from the lowliest cultural tourist to the high-minded scholar and critic, were enticed to 'unwrap' the package and enjoy it; the contributors to this volume have both savored the feast and 'unwrapped' pieces of the phenomenon according to their own lights, sometimes in the expectation of being pleasantly surprised, sometimes with the intent of unmasking the object. Even the unmaskings, however, are not fatal, but revealing. The essays range from the box of Weimar chocolates created for the occasion, to the phenomenon of Goethe commodification and trademarking, to a study of Schiller's agonized efforts to sell himself profitably to Duke Carl August so as to establish himself in Weimar-Jena, and to the discovery of Goethe's participation, as a government official, in some quite unsavory (but at the time quite common) dealings in human commodities (supplying 'recruits' for Prussian and perhaps other armies of the day). The volume abounds in new insights and discoveries about the culture and activities of Weimar courtly and bourgeois high-society (for example music practices, the Weimar theater, masked balls, the commercial production of plaster busts with which to adorn the home, the local very influential fashion magazine, etc.) and illuminates the participation of lesser-known figures in the creation of what came to be known as Classical Weimar. Taken together the essays demonstrate the productive potential of Cultural Studies when scholars pool their talents cooperatively."

Thomas P. Saine, Editor, Goethe Yearbook

Contents

Introduction

Like a Box of Chocolates…
    Simon Richter

Selling Weimar by the Kilo

1: Goethe®. Advertising, Marketing, and Merchandising the Classical
    Burkhard Henke

2: Weimar Classicism and the Origins of Consumer Culture
    Daniel Purdy

Weimar and the Senses

3: Floating Heads: Weimar Portrait Busts
    Catriona MacLeod

4: Music in Weimar circa 1780: Decentering Text, Decentering Goethe
    Annie Janeiro Randall

Performativity and Transgression in Weimar

5: War and Dramaturgy: Goethe's Command of the Weimar Theater
    Karin Schutjer

6: From Werther to Amazons: Cross-Dressing and Male-Male Desire
    Susan E. Gustafson

Women in Weimar

7: Sartorial Transgressions: Re-Dressing Class and Gender Hierarchies in Masquerades and Travesties
    Elisabeth Krimmer

8: Women Writers and the Authorization of Literary Practice
    Linda Dietrick

9: The Hunchback of Weimar: Louise von Göchhausen and the Weimar Grotesque
    Susanne Kord

Wrapping Up the Weimar Myth

10: Creation and Constipation: Don Carlos and Schiller's Blocked Passage to Weimar
    Stephanie B. Hammer

11: Skeletons in Goethe's Closet: Human Rights, Protest, and the Myth of Political Liberality
    W. Daniel Wilson

12: The Weimar Myth: From City of the Arts to Global Village
    Gert Theile

How to Order