Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Holl, Mirjam-Kerstin

Titel

Das Wechselspiel von Text und Kontexten – Georg Büchners Danton's Tod und die zwei Gesichter der Revolution

Ist Teil von

• World literature studies, 2014, Vol.VI (3), p.51-78

Ort / Verlag

Ústav svetovej literatúry, Slovenská akadémia vied

Erscheinungsjahr

2014

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This reflection begins with a scandal: In 2007 Martin Mosebach the recent prize-winner of the prestigious Georg-Büchner-Preis provoked a public outcry with his thesis comparing Saint- Just, Büchner and Himmler for their dealing with violence in giving ideological excuses. It shows how extreme interpretation can be. Especially Georg Büchners Danton’s Tod is since its existence a battle field of ideological standpoints between left and right concerning Georg Büchner’s sight towards revolutionary action and the needs and risks of violence. Up to our days we can see that ideological battle in the first discussions about the Marburger Ausgabe (the critical edition of Büchner’s literal work in 2000) and the crucial edition of Danton’s Tod. There it is shown once more how different the same literal communication can be interpreted and judged especially if it is focused on a single item like the speech of St. Just in II, 7 as a standpoint of the author himself – pro or contra violence. We should transparently controlling our methods without cutting new and creative approaches. My own methodical thesis is that there exists a good deal of combination of methods which could be combined productively without (too much) friction. Methods more close to the text and methods more focused on history of ideas, historical and social contexts could deliver an answer how Georg Büchner wanted to show the problems of terror in avoiding old ideological discussions. Approaches close to the texts show how literal communication in the texts works and helps us to control theses. The sociological approaches like Niklas Luhmann´s theory of systems and Jan and Aleida Assmann´s theory of collective (social) memory deliver a good framework helping to show changes in the shapes of production, reception and interpretation but they are a bit too abstract, too far away from concrete texts. So there is a need to build bridges between the approaches to show clusters in a sort of over-lay. Therefore we have a dialogical structure in working with our methods. In the view of Niklas Luhmann’s theory of systems the French Revolution marks the turning point towards a modern functionally orientated society. It is both, the beginning of modern democracies and totalitarianism as antagonistic mechanisms – at least marked with the crucial conflict of steering an overflowing egoistic individualism with social discipline (M. Foucault) and elements of solidarity. This antagonism leads to frictions between subcultural forms of social organization playing the role of innovative and critical control which could be described by the idea of official and non-official collective/social memory (J. and A. Assmann) respective by the idea of different forms of social “semantic programms” and their elements (Luhmann, Holl) forming concepts (e.g. of history) and commentating each other.