|
Abstract: Gerhart Hauptmann’s novella Der Schuß im Park is one of the lesser known texts by the Nobel Prize winner for literature. It was published in 1939, thus belonging to his late work, and was classified by Goebbels as ›rassenschänderisch‹ (›racially defiling‹). As Gert Oberembt has shown, the narrative takes up various typical motifs of Hauptmann, including that of bigamy. What is astonishing, however, is that one of the characters in the novella, which is set in Silesia, is an African woman. In many ways Hauptmann crosses borders with his novella: The fact that an African woman travels to Europe represents a reversal of directions of movement, not foreseen by imperialist ideology, and therefore appears as an illegal breaking through continental barriers. The present contribution attempts to situate the Silesian poet’s text within his oeuvre, taking into account both Hauptmann’s attachment to his homeland, which made him suspicious in the eyes of emigrants like Thomas Mann, and his interest in foreign cultures, informed by ethnographic studies he eagerly read. The article then ref lects on the authors’ crossing of genre boundaries between novella and crime narrative. In particular, however, it explores the question of how the female foreigner in Der Schuß im Park penetrates European reality and must therefore be annulled by violence. Intertextual hints will be followed and will lead us to Kleist and his literary ref lections on race, treason and colonial violence (and to Conrads masterpiece Heart of Darkness). Contrapuntal reading finally shows the ambivalences not only of the main character, but of the novella itself
|
