Strange Meetings: Anglo-German Literary Encounters from 1910 to 1960

302 Pages·2008·1.31 MB·English

by  Peter Edgerly Firchow

Strange
Meetings

Strange
Meetings
34
Anglo-germAn
literAry encounters
from 1910 to 1960
Peter Edgerly Firchow
the cAtholic university
of AmericA Press
Washington, D.C.
Copyright © 2008
The Catholic University of America Press
All rights reserved
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements
of American National Standards for Information Science—Permanence
of Paper for Printed Library Materials, Ansi Z39.48-1984.
∞
librAry of congress cAtAloging-in-PublicAtion DAtA
Firchow, Peter Edgerly, 1937–
Strange meetings : Anglo-German literary encounters from
1910 to 1960 / Peter Edgerly Firchow.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
isbn 978-0-8132-1533-4 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. English literature—
20th century—History and criticism. 2. Germany—In literature.
3. Germany—Foreign public opinion, British. 4. National characteristics,
German, in literature. 5. English literature—German influences.
6. Other (Philosophy) in literature. I. Title.
Pr830.g36f57 2008
820.9'35843—dc22 2008004213
Dedicated to the memory of my German grandparents,
Anna Neffin Firchow and
August Kahle Firchow
who fled the destruction of their home in the spring of 1945
and are buried in an unmarked mass grave somewhere near the
town of Belzig in the Province of Brandenburg, Germany
I am the enemy you killed, my friend.
—WilfreD oW en, “strAnge meeting” (1918)
ContEntS
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xiii
4
Introduction 1
ChaPtEr 1
Sunlight in the Hofgarten: Eliot, Lawrence,
and Brooke in Pre-1914 Munich 23
ChaPtEr 2
Shakespeare, Goethe, and the
War of the Professors, 1914–1918 56
ChaPtEr 3
Herr Issywoo (Christopher Isherwood)
Discovers Berlin 98
ChaPtEr 4
The Attractions of Fascism for the Literary
Avant-Garde in Britain between the Wars 152
ChaPtEr 5
W. H. Auden and Josef Weinheber:
Poets of Kirchstetten 219
Conclusion 247
4
References 257
Index 279

PrEFaCE
More than twenty years have passed since I published The Death
of the German Cousin: Variations on a National Stereotype, 1980–1920
(1986). It was among the first books to take a new and more even-
handed look at the strained literary and cultural relations between
Britain and Germany during what was probably the most crucial
period for their development as well as for that of the modern
world—in other words, the period that has profoundly shaped the
social, cultural, and political conditions under which we are still liv-
ing. Quite naturally, as even non-Marxist observers are aware, the
literary and cultural relations between these two leading rival na-
tions of the first half of the twentieth century reflected and have
continued to reflect, though in necessarily changed ways, their
sometimes even more strained social, political, and military rela-
tions. Indeed, one of the two main aims of The Death of the German
Cousin was to show how social, political, and, of course, military
issues had a profound impact on how one nation viewed the other
in literary and cultural terms. The other principal aim—as well as
admittedly also the more unusual and even controversial one—was
to show how that impact was nearly as profound when the relation-
ship was looked at from the opposite perspective. In other words, I
argued that the manner in which England viewed Germany liter-
arily and culturally—and vice versa—came to matter in ways that
were not merely literary or cultural. I argued, in short, that changes
in perception often preceded and eventually led to changes in ac-
tion. It is an argument I continue to make in the present book. Lit-
erature, I am convinced, continues to matter in vital ways that are
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