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Mediating Culture in the Seventeenth-Century German Novel
Eberhard Werner Happel, 1647-1690
By Gerhild Scholz Williams The University of Michigan Press
Copyright © 2015 Gerhild Scholz Williams
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-12010-9
CHAPTER 1
Setting the Stage
Happel's Novels
Between the invention of movable type and the birth of the Internet, the development that had the most lasting impact on human communication was the emergence of the periodical press: the regularly delivered daily, weekly, and monthly news reports that began to be published in Germany during the first decade of the seventeenth century. The periodical press profoundly affected the national and international exchange of ideas and transfer of news. Its impact can be seen in written texts of all kinds, particularly in the newly emerging and increasingly popular narrative genre of the novel. The news media were to play an unusually important role in the German novel of the seventeenth century, rendering it fertile ground for the examination of mutual influences. Moreover, to explore the interaction of multiple European and non-European cultures reflected in the great variety of print media in the seventeenth century is especially fitting at the present time, when globalization is on everyone's mind and in everyone's discourse. The seventeenth century is acquiring new currency in our thought exactly because current globalizing energies touch almost all economic, political, and cultural environments. They resonate with the contemporary reader because we see them emerge already in the baroque, in the early modern colonizing ambitions that pushed European powers to aggressively broaden their reach across their borders to distant lands. Striving for economic wealth and political power by subjugating (or, at the very least, gaining influence over) faraway countries and cultures, European hegemonic ambitions competed for resources of all kinds: gold, spices, hardwood, silk, and especially slaves, the human capital whose labor was perceived as indispensable in the increasingly competitive world market.
In the latter half of the seventeenth century, Eberhard Werner Happel was one of the authors whose writings recorded this early modern race toward European global dominance. A tireless producer of news collections, histories, and multivolume novels, many of which melded conventional seventeenth-century convoluted fictions with contemporary events and personalities, Happel reflected on the cultural dynamics of his time, which are often reminiscent of those of our present day. From his media-rich observation point in the bustling and powerful merchant city of Hamburg, he reported on a German Empire that was politically fractured and threatened by endless wars, by the voracious trading and colonizing appetites of its neighbors Sweden and Denmark, and by the growing imperial ambitions of France, the Netherlands, England, and the Ottoman Porte.
Produced mostly after Happel settled in Hamburg, his novels document the political sense and the romantic sensibilities of his time. They were so widely read and popular that one of his publishers, Matthaeus Wagner of Ulm, continued to produce and sell new titles under Happel's name for several years after the author's death. This study will explore Happel's astonishing intellectual, cultural, and social reach as he guided readers across the European continent and beyond, to the Near East, the Far East, Africa, and Asia.
Wann ich/ein jener Weltweise/ gefraget würde/wie mein Vatterland hiesse/würde ich ihm antworten: Die Welt. ... Solchem nach habe mir die Welt zu meinem Vatterland erkohren. ... Darum sollen wir unsern Sinn auf keinen Ort allein wenden/sondern uns dessen bescheiden/daß wir nicht einem Winckel zu- oder angebohren/und daß vielmehr die gantze Welt unser Vatterland sey. Wann aber die gantze Welt mein Vatterland/ so thue ich ja nicht übel/wann ich den Ruhm der gantzen Welt/nach meinem Vermögen/außbreite. Was ist fürtrefflicher als die Welt/du magst ein Stück loben was dier beliebet/so wirst du solches an einem Theil der Welt am besten thun können.
Reading only one of Happel's novels, his Weltbürgertum, would make his self-consciousness and self-confidence as a citizen of the world immediately apparent. Happel's life in Hamburg, that prosperous and intellectually vibrant island, at once both urban and urbane, surrounded by the turmoil of multiple regional wars, profoundly affected his narrative reach. It prompted him to write, though in the German language, a distinctly European novel spanning wide geographies and plumbing significant political and emotional depths.
Die Welt ist und bleibt ein Allgemeines Theatrum und Schauplatz aller Welt-Händeln/auf welchem Jahr auß/Jahr ein/den Aufmercksamen vnd Wissen-Begierigen das Jenige/was da und dorten sich zuträget/vnd zwar vielfaltig/was schon zu andern Zeiten sich ereignet/ von Neuem/nur mit diesem Unterscheid vorgestellet wird/daß zwar die Sache an sich selbsten/biß an wenige Umstände/fast die Vorige/vnd nur von andern Personen/oder in andern Ländern außgeübet/vnd Menschlicher Beurtheil- und Anschauung vor Augen gestellet wird.
Happel participated in this world on many levels: intellectually, professionally, and economically. From his geographic good fortune as a resident of Hamburg flowed yet another advantage (as Flemming Schock has persuasively argued): namely, that Happel successfully made use of Hamburg's media wealth, which, along with access to the rich store of newspapers produced in Hamburg and elsewhere, included public libraries and private book collections. His contemporary Gottfried Zenner says as much when he comments that Happel settled in Hamburg "wegen der guten Bibliothecen als auch der Verleger halber" (because of the good libraries and also because of the publishers). In his Ungarische Kriegs-Roman, Happel gratefully acknowledges the riches of one of those libraries in particular, that of Mayor Julius Surland (1657–1703), one of the most distinguished among the many Hamburg book collectors. The dedication (Zuschrifft) of August 12, 1687, praises Surland's library as a "herrliche Bibliothec" (beautiful library) that, as it continued to grow, would become one of the most famous ("curieusesten" [most amazing]) in the world.
Hamburg was also occasionally home to the well-known writer Philipp von Zesen (1619–89), who, in 1642, founded the Teutschgesinnte Genossenschaft in an effort to advance the German language toward literary distinction at a time when the market was very much dominated by all things French. A few decades later, Johann Rist, founder in 1658 of the Elbschwanenorden, became, like Happel, a journalist and a writer of novels. Of equally great importance for Happel and his writer colleagues was the arrival in Hamburg of Georg Greflinger (1618–77), who, aside from his work as a historian, translator, and poet, gained fame as one of the first news editors. He founded the Nordische Mercurius, a newspaper that would be the source of many of the news reports that found their way into Happel's novels. Hamburg's energetic media market was connected to all the important European news centers, ensuring a reliable and uninterrupted supply of news and newspapers. Thus, it is not surprising that the first media theorist, Kaspar Stieler (1632–1707), though not a resident of Hamburg, was, like Rist, a member of one of the most renowned German literary societies, the Fruchtbringende Gesellschaft, and a frequent visitor to the city. Here he published his groundbreaking and frequently quoted definition of the news media, the Zeitungs-Lust und Nutz (1695).
Scholars in the field of media studies have devoted a great deal of attention to the emergence of newspapers and newspaper collections and their influences on early modern communication, literature, and culture. Happel figures very large in such research, with several recent studies centering on Happel's news writings. Both Uta Egenhoff and Flemming Schock, for example, have analyzed Happel's famous nonfiction work the RelationesCuriosae (1681–91), taking a close look not only at the work itself but at the cultural environment from which it emerged. Setting aside Happel's work as a novelist, both scholars, following Carsten Prange, focus almost exclusively on his journalistic achievements. Holger Böning has opened our eyes to the burgeoning influence of the Hamburg media market in the seventeenth century. Without their important and pioneering contributions to the research in early modern news printing, none of the most recent work would have been possible or even thinkable.
In Novel Translations, her significant study of the evolution of the German novel within the European context, Bethany Wiggin mentions Happel only in passing. In comparison, in his book on the Hungarian uprising and European power politics in the second half of the seventeenth century, Béla Köpeczi offers a detailed review of the six volumes of Happel's Ungarische Kriegs-Roman (1685–98). Köpeczi praises Happel's historical and political accuracy and acuity, while blaming those same traits for suffocating the novel's central love story, which Köpeczi calls "psychologically insufficiently grounded" (nicht genügend begründete Liebesgeschichte).
These scholars are of the same mind when highlighting Happel's extensive use of multiple media in his writings, foremost among them news reports, news collections as well as chorographies, and travel writings. Regarding the latter, we know that having studied at the University of Kiel and because of Kiel's closeness to the court of Holstein-Gottorp, Happel was familiar with and frequently made use of the widely popular writings of the traveler and explorer Adam Olearius (1603–71), who famously journeyed through Persia and Russia in the service of the Duke of Holstein-Gottorp. Though Olearius was no longer among the living by the time Happel came into his own, Happel's frequent mentions make clear that he was familiar with him, not only as a writer but also as a patron of the university and a tireless collector on behalf of Holstein-Gottorp's cabinet of wonders (Wunderkammer). Moreover, the foreword of the Thesaurus Exoticorum (1688) identifies travel writings as important sources for his books.
Of special importance to this analysis is the fact that Happel mined newspapers for much of the information employed in his novels. News items are woven into the narrative structure as his characters spend considerable time reading, commenting on, and reacting to them. For example, the novels' narrative progress is often driven by news reports about the activities of corsairs and pirates. These seagoing profiteers, whether outlaws or legally sanctioned, made the coastal areas of Europe and the seas beyond unsafe for travelers, merchants, peasants, and fishermen, whom they pursued and captured, either to sell as slaves or to retain for ransom. Likewise present both in newspapers and in Happel's novels is the century-long conflict between the German and Ottoman empires, the struggle for hegemony over eastern Europe, and the quest for the control of Hungary. In addition, Happel fills many pages describing and decrying the religious conflict that affected the whole of Europe after the French revoked the Edict of Nantes (1598) in 1685, driving many French Protestants to seek refuge in neighboring countries or overseas colonies.
Of utmost importance to this study is the fact that Happel's creative life-span corresponds to the beginning of a vigorous trans-European discussion about the nature of the novel and novel writing — the relationship between fact and fiction, between history and romance, and between the rapidly growing community of novel writers and readers in France and England. In this, Happel follows the advice that his near contemporary Sigmund von Birken (1616–64), a famous and successful writer, had directed at the readers of Herzog Anton Ulrich's (1633–1714) six- volume novel Aramena. In a preface to the reader ("Vor-Ansprache zum Edlen Leser"), Birken confirms that both histories and novels have their uses, but he contends that more praiseworthy than either are those novels combining history and fiction, novels that Birken calls "Geschichtgedichte und Gedichtgeschichten." Such works offer, according to Birken, a most useful and entertaining pastime ("ein recht-adelicher und dabei hochnützlicher Zeitvertreib"), as opposed to mere histories, which, though useful, tend to bore and even disgust the reader ("jedoch zuweiln mit eckel gelesen"). In his address to the reader ("Vor-Ansprache zum Edlen Leser"), the preface to his Teutsche Rede-bind und Dichtkunst (1679), Birken reviews the history/fiction dichotomy in greater detail: "die Gedichtgeschicht-Schriften/ behalten zwar die wahrhafte Historie mit ihren haupt-umständen/ dichten aber mehr neben-umstände dazu/ und erzehlen die Sachen nicht in der Ordnung wie sie sich zugetragen" (the fiction- history writings keep to the truth of the historical events, but they add to it events that are not narrated as they unfolded). Setting these up against fiction, he continues, "die Geschichtschriften/die Geschichtgedichte/tragen entweder eine wahrhafftige Geschichte unter dem fürhang erdichteter Namen verborgen ... oder sind ganz erdichtete Historien" (the historical writings either hide true stories under fictional names ... or are completely invented narrations).
How much this discussion was on Happel's mind is apparent in the frequency with which he addressed the topic of these narrative dichotomies and their impact in the prefaces of his novels. Finally, careful examination of Happel's novels reveals that the dramatic play with gender and social and national identities is ubiquitous on both sides of his repeatedly elaborated duality of fact and fiction.
Happel about Happel
What little we know of Happel's life comes from two sources, both products of his own pen. He briefly comments on his life's challenges in his own voice in his address to the reader when he reviews the circumstances, creation, and publishing history of the novel Der Afrikanische Tarnolast.30 In addition, a comment published shortly after his death points to the Academische Roman (1690) as a hidden source for his biography ("seiner Jungend Lebens-Lauff hat er in den Academischen Roman verdeckter Weise beschrieben" [a description of his youth he hid in the story of the Academische Roman]). More detailed information about the Tarnolast's gestation is contained in a fictional autobiography embedded in the novel Der Teutsche Carl, also published in 1690. According to the accounts given in both novels, Happel came to writing by happenstance in 1666, at nineteen years of age, when he sought relief from melancholy at a time when things did not look especially promising for him: "[M]eine Melancholischen Gedancken zu vertreiben/ich/ nachdem ich meine Academische Scripta und Lectiones repetiret/ die übrige Zeit auf eine andere Weise zu versüssen gedachte. Nemlich/ meine Gedancken und Sinne applicirten sich/ da ich kaum das neunzehende Jahr meines Alters überschritten, zu einem ROMAN, und solchem nach habe ich damahlen diesen TARNOLAST begonnen" (In an effort to drive away my melancholy thoughts and to sweeten the time after my academic work and having repeated my lessons. That is, when I was barely nineteen years old my thoughts and my mind turned to a novel, and so I started the Tarnolast in those days).
One year later, poverty would drive Happel from his home, his family, and his studies. He finished the Tarnolast in 1670, while living in Hamburg, and deposited it with printer/publisher Johan Naumann, hoping that it would soon reach his reading public. But Naumann tarried over the publication until his death made it impossible. Nineteen years passed before the Tarnolast was issued by the print shop of Matthaeus Wagner in Ulm, who would also publish several of Happel's subsequent novels. As Happel jokingly comments in the Tarnolast's preface, it was high time, as the book threatened to become his "Opus Posthumum." He was right: he died in 1690.
The basic narrative ingredients characteristic of Happel's style are already in place in the Tarnolast, his first novel. In his later novels, however, Happel becomes a more disciplined, more knowledgeable, and stylistically more adventurous writer. Looking back on his earlier writings, a mature Happel comments critically on his occasional slips into his native Hessian dialect: "Du wirst ... zwar einen mercklichen Unterschied finden/ inmassen Er [Tarnolast] mit dem Hessischen Dialect hin und wieder angefüllet" (You will find a bit of a difference in that the Tarnolost is filled, here and there, with a Hessian dialect [AT: Vorrede]).
Between 1666 and 1690 (and even beyond), many and varied publications were to follow upon Happel's "first conceived" work ("am ersten empfangen worden"). Judging by comments from contemporaries, Happel's writings enjoyed great popularity and sold well. When the Afrikanische Tarnolast finally reached booksellers in 1689, the novel had the good fortune of attracting the attention of one of the great minds of the late seventeenth century, the philosopher, scholar, and literary critic Christian Thomasius (1655–1728), who devoted a much-quoted review to Happel's first novel, praising the author's ability to effectively convey to the reader the otherness of Prince Tarnolast's African culture and upbringing.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Mediating Culture in the Seventeenth-Century German Novel by Gerhild Scholz Williams. Copyright © 2015 Gerhild Scholz Williams. Excerpted by permission of The University of Michigan Press.
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