Abstract
This exploration of the German novelist and poet Wilhelm Lehmann (1882–1968) as a nature writer situates his seminal writings within the broader cultural context of the Weimar Republic. The guiding hypothesis is that Lehmann developed, in response to the experience of World War I, literary exercises that resonated with the natural world. His systematic privileging of perception aesthetics over production aesthetics problematizes modernist tenets of Neue Sachlichkeit and offers an alternative to the dominant cultural habitus of cool conduct. The essay reads Lehmann’s aesthetic program of converging the observational skills of a naturalist with a writing practice of humilitas as an ethics of gift. It concludes with an attempt to interpret the interconnectedness of specific features in Lehmann’s writing as representative of a specifically German-language vein of nature writing: a phenomenological writing practice that is modeled on empirical observation, a nonsubjectivist literary expressionism, a reflection on the uncontrollable biological conditions of human life.
This study was written during a research stay at the Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main, made possible by a stipend from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Translated by Elliot Sturdy. Unless otherwise noted, all translations are the translator’s own.
- 2.
Lethen relates this to the German-Jewish Romance studies scholar Werner Krauss’ commentary on Gracián and his reflections upon the role of Gracián for his survival strategy in the Plötzensee “Prison” (1994, 60).
- 3.
Lethen’s use of Plessner here has not remained uncontroversial; see Fischer (2002, 80–102).
- 4.
The term “more-than-human world” was coined by David Abram as an alternative for the German word “Umwelt”; see Abram (2017).
- 5.
Plessner states “Der Mensch muss tun, um zu leben. Ihm genügt nicht eine Tat, sondern allein die Rastlosigkeit unablässigen Tuns” [“The human must act in order to live. The deed is not enough for him, only the restlessness of his ceaseless action”]. (1975, 320).
- 6.
From “Zahme Xenien 3.” The Austrian botanist and cultural philosopher R.H. Francé actualized and broadly popularized the role of the morphological concept of analogy in dialogue with contemporary psychology and the philosophy of consciousness in his book Das Sinnenleben der Pflanzen (1907). The Belgian author Maurice Maeterlinck found there to be wide-ranging analogies between botanical and cognitive processes. In his essay “The Intelligence of Flowers” (1907), a work with which Lehmann would have been familiar through the Neue Rundschau, Maeterlinck developed a concept of the human being that is embedded in nature’s network of consciousness. For a detailed analysis, see Schäfer (1969, 15–21),
- 7.
Cf. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Hermann Schmitz, and Gernot Böhme. A sociological/philosophical foundation for an affirmative concept of resonance can be found in Charles Taylor, for instance, in his essay “Atomismus” (1995, 73–106).
- 8.
See Wiesing (2015, 115–127).
- 9.
The term “Luftmensch” was codified in Selig Schachnowitz’s Luftmenschen. Roman aus der Gegenwart (1912). It also played a role in the iconography of Marc Chagall; see his Green Violinist (1923/24). A comprehensive overview can be found in Berg (2008).
- 10.
Lehmann regards this as his first successful poem. “To My Son” can be read as a direct counter position to the behavioral strategy of coldness. It poses an alternative to the central aspect of the cold persona: resonance (between generations and with nature) vs. individualism, expressive and eclectic actors vs. impression management, reciprocity between perceiver and perceived vs. mastery of the objective gaze.
- 11.
Some of the arguments to be featured here can also be found in the author’s review of the latest edition of Lehmann’s text (Malkmus 2018).
- 12.
In this context, Axel Goodbody refers to the influence of the “country diaries” that one might find in English magazines with which Lehmann was familiar from his time as a British prisoner of war. Their emphasis is on “the observation of seasonal and metrological changes in the plant and animal world” [“der Beobachtung der jahreszeitlich und witterungsmäßig bedingten Änderungen in der Pflanzen- und Tierwelt“] (Goodbody 2008, 63).
- 13.
In Mühe des Anfangs (1952), Lehmann describes a poetic form of a vocational calling, in an almost literal reference to Thoreau: “Wurde ich schon gerufen, um die heilige Wildnis der Erde zu bewahren?” [“Was I already called upon to protect the holy wildness of the world?”] (1999c, 46).
- 14.
Lehmann often emphasizes the analogy between etymological research and botanizing, both of which search for hidden similarities. See Schäfer (1969, 13–19).
- 15.
Cf. Wundt, Wilhelm: Sprachgeschichte und Sprachpsychologie (1901) and Rozwadowski, Jan: Wortbildung und Bedeutung (1904).
- 16.
- 17.
Die Kolonne. Zeitung der jungen Gruppe Dresden, Nr. 1 (Dez. 1929), 1, quoted in Schäfer, Lehmann, 127.
- 18.
Ibid.
- 19.
In this respect, Lehmann’s poetics can be brought into relation with Hartmut Rosa’s theory of resonance (2018). The Bukolische Tagebuch is a reaction to the universally felt “Weltverstummen,” or “silencing of the world,” of modernity and also a powerfully worded expression of a modernist “Resonanzsensibilisierung,” or “becoming sensitive to resonance.”
- 20.
See Carls and Ullmann (1932).
References
Abram, David. 2017. The Spell of the Sensuous—Perception and Language in a More-Than-Human World. New York: Vintage Books.
Anders, Günther. [1956] 1987. Die Antiquiertheit des Menschen. Vol. I: Über die Seele im Zeitalter der zweiten industriellen Revolution. München: Beck.
Berg, Nicolas. 2008. Luftmenschen. Zur Geschichte einer Metapher. Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht.
Berman, Marshall. 1988. All That Is Solid Melts into Thin Air: The Experience of Modernity. New York: Penguin.
Bohrer, Karl Heinz. 1978. Die Ästhetik des Schreckens: Die pessimistische Romantik und Ernst Jüngers Frühwerk. München: Hanser.
Carls, C.D. and David Ullmann (eds.) 1932. Mit allen Sinnen. Lyrik unserer Zeit. Berlin: Rembrandt.
Dostojewskij, Fjodor. 2006. Aufzeichnungen aus dem Kellerloch. Trans. Swetlana Geier. Frankfurt a. M.: Fischer.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. 2008. Notes from Underground, and The Gambler. Trans. Jane Kentish. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fischer, Joachim. 2002. Panzer oder Maske: ‘Verhaltenslehren der Kälte’ oder Sozialtheorie der ‘Grenze’. In Plessners Grenzen der Gemeinschaft. Eine Debatte, eds. W. Eßbach, J. Fischer, H. Lethen, L. Helmut, 80–102. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 1983. Selected Poems. Trans. Christopher Middleton. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. 2014. Faust I & II. Trans. Stuart Atkins. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
Goodbody, Axel. 2008. Lehmanns Bukolische Tagebücher. Der Dichter als ‘Nature Writer’. In Wilhelm Lehmann zwischen Naturwissen und Poesie, ed. Uwe Pörksen, 51–67. Göttingen: Wallstein.
Jünger, Ernst. 2004. Storm of Steel. Trans. Michael Hofmann. London: Penguin Books.
Jünger, Ernst. 2013. In Stahlgewittern. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Lehmann, Wilhelm. 1982. Sämtliche Gedichte (Gesammelte Werke 1), ed. Hans Dieter Schäfer. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Lehmann, Wilhelm. 1989. Der Überläufer (Gesammelte Werke 3), ed. Uwe Pörksen. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Lehmann, Wilhelm. 1999a. Bukolisches Tagebuch aus den Jahren 1927–1932. In Autobiographische und vermischte Schriften (Gesammelte Werke 8), ed. Verena Kobel-Bänninger, 175–309. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Lehmann, Wilhelm. 1999b. Liegt die Wahrheit der Dinge in den Dingen oder in uns In Autobiographische und vermischte Schriften (Gesammelte Werke 8), ed. Verena Kobel-Bänninger, 395–404. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Lehmann, Wilhelm. 1999c. Mühe des Anfangs. Biographische Aufzeichnung. In Autobiographische und vermischte Schriften (Gesammelte Werke 8), ed. Verena Kobel-Bänninger, 36–118. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Lethen, Helmut. 1994. Verhaltenslehren der Kälte. Lebensversuche zwischen den Kriegen. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Lethen, Helmut. 2002. Cool Conduct: The Culture of Distance in Weimar Germany. Trans. Don Reneau. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Loerke, Oskar. 1955. Tagebücher 1903–1939, ed. Hermann Kasack. Heidelberg: Lambert Schneider.
Malkmus, Bernhard. 2018. ‘Wir leben vom Nichterklärten’: Wilhelm Lehmanns Bukolisches Tagebuch erscheint in einer bibliophilen Neuausgabe. Ecozon@ 9(1): 151–56.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 1968. Jenseits von Gut und Böse (Kritische Gesamtausgabe VI, 2), eds. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Nietzsche, Friedrich. 2001. Beyond Good and Evil. Trans. Judith Norman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Nussbaum, Martha C. 2011. Creating Capabilities: The Human Development Approach. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Plessner, Helmuth. [1924] 2003. Grenzen der Gemeinschaft. Eine Kritik des sozialen Radikalismus. In: Id. Gesammelte Schriften V, eds. G. Dux, O. Marquard, E. Ströker, 7–134. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Plessner, Helmuth. [1928] 1975. Die Stufen des Organischen und der Mensch. Berlin: de Gruyter.
Pörksen, Uwe. 1979. Beziehungen Wilhelm Lehmanns zur Literatur des Mittelalters und zur Philologie der Jahrhundertwende. In Mittelalter-Rezeption, eds. J. Kühnel, H.-D. Mück, U. Müller, 380–417. Göppingen: Kümmerle.
Pörksen, Uwe. 2015. ‘In Stahlgewittern’ oder als ‘Überläufer’ zur Natur? Ernst Jüngers Erlebnis und Wilhelm Lehmanns Deserteur und Luftmensch im Ersten Weltkrieg. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner.
Rosa, Hartmut. 2018. Resonanz. Eine Soziologie der Weltbeziehung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Rosa, Hartmut. 2019. Resonance: A Sociology of our Relationship to the World. Trans. James Wagner. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Schäfer, Hans Dieter. 1969. Wilhelm Lehmann. Studien zu seinem Leben und Werk. Bonn: Bouvier.
Schäfer, Hans Dieter. 1982. Das gespaltene Bewusstsein. Über deutsche Kultur und Lebenswirklichkeit 1933–1945. München: Hanser.
Taylor, Charles. 1995. Atomism. In Powers, Possessions and Freedom, ed. Alkis Kontos, 39–62. Buffalo: University of Toronto Press.
Thoreau, Henry David. 2004. Walking. In Walden, Civil Disobedience, and Other Writings, ed. William Rossi, 260–287. New York: Norton.
Wiesing, Lambert. 2014. The Philosophy of Perception: Phenomenology and Image Theory. Trans. Nancy Ann Roth. London: Bloomsbury Acamdemic.
Wiesing, Lambert. 2015. Das Mich der Wahrnehmung. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp.
Zischler, Hanns. 2017. Der Physiognomiker des Unscheinbaren. Afterword in Lehmann, Wilhelm. Bukolisches Tagebuch und weitere Schriften zur Natur, 273–279. Berlin: Matthes & Seitz.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2024 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Malkmus, B. (2024). Wilhelm Lehmann: Nature Writing as a Behavioural Strategy. In: Dürbeck, G., Kanz, C. (eds) German-Language Nature Writing from Eighteenth Century to the Present. Literatures, Cultures, and the Environment. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50910-0_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-50910-0_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-50909-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-50910-0
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)