Berlin Electropolis: Shock, Nerves, and German Modernity (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism) PDF
Preview Berlin Electropolis: Shock, Nerves, and German Modernity (Weimar and Now: German Cultural Criticism)
BERLIN ELECTROPOLIS WEIMAR AND NOW: GERMAN CULTURAL CRITICISM Edward Dimendberg, Martin Jay, and Anton Kaes, General Editors Berlin Electropolis Shock, Nerves, and German Modernity Andreas Killen UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley Los Angeles London University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UCPress Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2006 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Killen, Andreas. Berlin electropolis : shock, nerves, and German modernity / Andreas Killen. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–520–24362–5 (alk. paper). 1. Neurasthenia—Social aspects—Germany— Berlin—History. 2. Mental fatigue—Social aspects—Germany—Berlin—History. 3. Electro- therapeutics—Germany—Berlin—History. 4. Electri- fication—Germany—Berlin—History. 5. Industrial- ization—Germany—Berlin—Psychological aspects. 6. Social change—Germany—Berlin—Psychological aspects. 7. Railroads—Employees—Mental health— Germany—Berlin. 8. Telephone operators—Mental health—Germany—Berlin. 9. Soldiers—Mental health—Germany—Berlin. 10. Psychiatry—Ger- many—Berlin—History. I. Title. RC552.N5K54 2005 362.196'8528'00943155—dc22 2005005216 Manufactured in the United States of America 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 This book is printed on New Leaf EcoBook 60, con- taining 60% postconsumer waste, processed chlorine free; 30% de-inked recycled fiber, elemental chlorine free; and 10% FSC-certified virgin fiber, totally chlo- rine free. EcoBook 60 is acid-free and meets the mini- mum requirements of ANSI/ASTM D5634–01 (Perma- nence of Paper).∞ Contents Acknowledgments / vii Introduction / 1 1. Berlin Electropolis / 15 2. Electrotherapy and the Nervous Self in Nineteenth-Century Germany / 48 3. Railway Accidents, Social Insurance, and the Pathogenesis of Mass Nervousness, 1889–1914 / 81 4. Electrotherapy and the Nervous Self during Wartime / 127 5. Psychiatrists, Telephone Operators, and Traumatic Neurosis, 1900–1926 / 162 Conclusion / 212 Notes / 219 Selected Bibliography / 275 Index / 291 Acknowledgments My largest debt is to Anson Rabinbach, who provided me with a model of scholarship and who oversaw this project with unfailing generosity from its inauspicious beginnings to its completion. I also owe thanks to Molly Nolan and Jerrold Seigel, who helped define the subject of my original dissertation and prodded me toward its realization. During the course of researching and writing this book, I received help at crucial junctures from Atina Grossmann, Tom Bender, Richard Sen- nett, John Savage, Peter Lang, Jonathan Skolnik, Paul Lerner, Eric Eng- strom, Michael Hubenstorf, Gerhard Baader, Dietrich Milles, Greg Eghi- gian, Christine Leuenberger, Mary Terrall, Dora Weiner, Sean Quinlan, Dan Brownstein, Jennifer Mason, Michael Hagner, Cornelius Borck, Annabella Bushra, Susan Jaffe, Jason Crouthamel, and Moritz Foellmer. Most of the research was supported by grants from the German Aca- demic Exchange Service (DAAD) and New York University. The writing itself was, for the most part, completed during three stints: one in an of- fice at Cooper Union generously loaned to me by Atina Grossmann; one during a stay at the UCLA Humanities Consortium; and one at the Max- Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin. I wish in particular to thank Vince Pecora at UCLA and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger at the MPI, as well as the staffs of their respective institutes, for the valuable support vii viii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS they provided me with. I would also to thank the three readers at the Uni- versity of California Press for their comments on an earlier version of this manuscript. My work in Berlin was aided by the staffs of the Karl Bonhoeffer Ner- venklinik, the Krankenblätterarchiv of the Charité Psychiatric Clinic, the Humboldt University Archives, the Bundesarchiv-Potsdam and Bundesarchiv-Lichterfelde, and the Institute for the History of Medicine. In Berlin, I was fortunate to count among my friends Carolyn Unger, Ulf Damann, Christian Hasucha, and, in particular, Johanna Schenkel, without whose great generosity my introduction to that city would have been far less pleasurable. Parts of chapter 5 were published earlier as Andreas Killen, “From Shock to Schreck: Psychiatrists, Telephone Operators, and Traumatic Neurosis in Germany 1900–1926,” Journal of Contemporary History 38, no. 2 (April 2003): 201–20, reprinted by permission of Sage Publi- cations Ltd. Last, I would like to thank my parents, Richard and Margrith, who long ago awakened my love of books. Above all, I wish to thank my dear wife, Marie, for her love and support, without which I would never have completed this project. It is to her and to my sons Henry and Nicholas and the life we share that this book is dedicated. Introduction F or a long time, to be modern meant to be “nervous,” whether that modernity was located in the emergent capitalist nations of eighteenth-century England and France or in the fully industrialized nineteenth-century Germany and United States. It meant to live in a sped-up world, one saturated with new stimuli, demands, risks, mes- sages, and pleasures, requiring constant adaptation to a wealth of new experiences. For Friedrich Nietzsche, writing in the 1880s, modernity and nervous complaints were virtually synonymous: “The whole burden of culture,” he wrote, “has become so great that there is a general dan- ger of over-stimulation of the nervous and thinking capacity.”1Yet until the mid-1700s neurosis as such was almost entirely unknown or was re- served for the privileged classes.2Only in the late nineteenth century did the experience of nervous illness become a more general one. Even then, it still preserved something of its origins within the world of enervated society ladies, hypersensitive bohemians, and, increasingly, overworked men of the professional classes. But once they confronted the fact that other classes of people too seemed to be in the grip of this quintessen- tially modern condition, German doctors felt compelled to redraw the malady’s social boundaries. By 1900 nervousness seemed to have become a mass phenomenon, a development that would eventually compel the 1
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