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The mother tongue at school
(2023)
This paper focuses on a key contradiction in nineteenth century nationalist ideology, namely the opposition between the emphasis on the sacred status of the mother tongue, on the one hand, and the use of universal mandatory schooling as a means of homogenization, on the other. The influential philologist Jacob Grimm insisted that only people whose mother tongue was German counted as members of the German nation; the mother tongue was the key criterion of authentic belonging. Yet Grimm also realized that mandatory schooling imposed a uniform language across a wide territory, wiping out local dialects and effectively giving shape to a more linguistically unified people. He thus witnessed how modern mass instruction forged a more standardized culture at the expense of the more natural-seeming transmission of language within families. In Grimm's writings on education, the valorization of the mother is continually disturbed by the presence of a surrogate figure, the school teacher.
Apresentando um breve histórico da ideia de organismo ao longo do século XVIII, tentaremos delinear a trajetória percorrida por ela até o momento em que se tornaria um elemento fundamental no debate sobre a nacionalidade russa promovido pela elite letrada do país após as Guerras Napoleônicas. Nesse trajeto, um papel fundamental é ocupado pelas ideias desenvolvidas pelo Romantismo alemão - em particular as dos filósofos J. G. Herder e, sobretudo, F. W. J. Schelling. Assim, buscaremos mostrar como alguns raciocínios oriundos da sua chamada "Filosofia da Identidade", e expressos em obras como "Ideias para uma Filosofia da Natureza" e "Filosofia da Arte", foram imprescindíveis para que intelectuais e escritores russos pudessem propugnar um projeto artístico e cultural característico para o seu próprio país.
The Austrian poet Franz Grillparzer is often presented in scholarly literature as an opponent of nationalism. Indeed, Grillparzer did oppose nationally motivated separatist tendencies, which he viewed as a threat to the existence of the supranational Habsburg Monarchy. However, his tragedy 'König Ottokars Glück und Ende' includes clear examples of the early Habsburg ideology which emerged along with the Austrian Empire during the Napoleonic Wars (a time of nationalist tensions) and which - at least initially - was imbued with a form of German Romantic nationalism. This ideology is displayed by the character of Rudolf von Habsburg, who - in the spirit of Romantic nationalism - is depicted as the embodiment of Germany. Rudolf's fervent Germanness - which appears to have been one of the reasons behind Grillparzer's problems with censorship under the Metternich regime - is not only evident in the character's words, but also in the clothes he wears. The grey coat that is one of Rudolf's most distinctive features may be a reference to what was known as an 'Old German' folk costume ('Altdeutsche Tracht'); after the Napoleonic Wars, this garment became a symbol used by the German nationalist student movement known as the 'Burschenschaftler'.
Im Folgenden werde ich über den Naturalismus als eine literarische Bewegung sprechen, von der es in der Forschung immer wieder heißt, sie habe ihre ästhetische Programmatik zwar publizistisch wirksam in Szene gesetzt, nicht aber auch in ihrem Anspruch entsprechende literarische Werke umsetzen können. Dem ist zunächst einmal zuzustimmen; zumal sich die hervorragenden literarischen Texte des Naturalismus nicht gerade als naturalistische auszeichnen lassen. Zugleich stellt sich die Frage, wodurch diese Disproportion zu erklären ist; in welchem Verhältnis steht die Insuffizienz der Leistungen in der literarischen Praxis zur ästhetischen Theorie? Ich möchte zeigen, daß es vor allem die Theoriedefizite in 'aestheticis' selbst waren und nicht so sehr kontingente Probleme der literarischen Umsetzung, die das rasche Abflauen des Naturalismus nach seinem kaum erreichten Höhepunkt 1890 bewirkten. Dieser fällt zusammen mit dem Beginn der literarischen Moderne im engeren Sinne. Aber beginnt diese 'erste' Moderne mit einem gescheiterten Versuch 'modern' zu sein?
The study offers a comprehensive overview on the works and activity of József Eötvös, central personality of the 19th-century modernisation of political culture and educational system in Hungary. It also reveals the paradoxical consequences of his efforts, namely the fact that while the first and second generation of Hungarian intellectuals returning home from Germany in the early ’40s and after the Austro-Hungarian Compromise in 1867 successfully contributed to the building of the modern cultural nation, at the end of the century the generation of émigrés chose Germany on purpose to escape the nationalistic institutional framework of Hungarian culture and sciences.
When, some two centuries ago, German Romantics turned their backs on modernity – industrialisation, urbanisation, commerce and secularisation – they turned to ancient India. For them, India exemplified the primordial unity of mankind with this and the afterworld. For sections of the emerging nationalist movement in Germany, found the deployment of India handy to question the cultural hegemony, and eventually break the political dominance, of France. They tried to surpass the French, who claimed the ancient Roman heritage, by claiming an even older heritage for the Germans. Friedrich Schlegel for example suggested that the German language, and not the French, stood in unbroken continuity with ancient Sanskrit. For Romantics such as he, Sanskrit, the oldest surviving Indo-European language, was closest to the language of original divine revelation. This lead Schlegel to romanticise India in a way that stood in marked contrast to the Orientalist clichés current in other parts of Europe at the time. For him, the link between Sanskrit and German made Germany the true oriental self of Europe. The importance of this particular representation of India for the German national movement is underlined by the great number of university chairs that sprang up in the course of the nineteenth century: twenty two in Germany as opposed to only three in the United Kingdom. This paper explores the particular kind of ‘inverse’ Orientalism of the Germans in the context of its recent post-colonial critique.