Abstract
In the early years of the Federal Republic, the Gruppe 47 could be seen as a cultural complement to the ‘economic miracle’ by bringing prestige not only to the country but also to the individual writers associated with it. It was at the height of its fame when in 1966 it was able to hold its conference at the prestigious University of Princeton, an export success equivalent to that of Mercedes or Volkswagen. After its, at the time, surprising demise just 1 year later in 1967, its aura has diminished, particularly because of its negative attitude to the writers, many of whom were Jewish, who went into exile during the Nazi years. In this volume, as the ironic words of Ingeborg Bachmann in the first part of the title suggest, the author’s criticism is directed against the treatment of female writers, who were very much a minority, with only 26 women reading their work at the Group’s conferences as opposed to 178 men.
Seifert divides her work into chapters generally devoted to a particular year and one or more female writers who came to the fore then. Except for the 1958 conference, they are presented in chronological order, the reason for this being that the Group’s self-appointed convenor Hans Werner Richter spoke of a ‘Frauentagung’, even though only 4 female writers were present, as opposed to around 40 men. Seifert explains at the outset that some chapters will be more ‘theatrical’ (szenischer) and others more analytical depending on the information available. She begins the 1958 chapter in the present tense by narrating Ruth Rehmann’s feelings of insecurity as she prepared to read. This insecurity was made worse by a stage whisper from the audience, which consisted of the German title of Christopher Fry’s play The Lady’s not for Burning (Die Dame ist nicht fürs Feuer) without the negative. Even if this was meant as a joke, Seifert is right to see the intervention as particularly intimidating, especially given the gladiatorial atmosphere at readings where reactions often included the thumbs-up sign or its opposite. Rehmann received positive reactions from two of the four all-male star critics who invariably had the chance of the first word. Seifert, however, notes how in this and other cases praise often includes references to the person of the female author rather than the text and tends to compartmentalize female writing with such terms as ‘Frauenliteratur’.
Seifert then goes on to give an account of her subsequent career. A major aim of the book is to give an overview of female writers’ achievements and reactions to them. In some cases, this includes comments made in obituaries. One example shows that crass misogynistic comments have lasted into the present century. When the novelist Gabriele Wohmann, the subject of one of Seifert’s 1960 chapters, died in 2015, one journalist described her as the Group’s ‘Spice Girl’ and its ‘Pippy Longstocking’.
The female writer most closely associated with the Gruppe 47 is Ingeborg Bachmann. She achieved fame after winning the Group’s prize in 1953, when in the following year Der Spiegel made her the subject of a cover story. Seifert notes how she was sexualised, in part, by an accompanying photograph that portrayed her as the archetype of an unconventional woman. According to Seifert, the text also reveals distrust towards someone with an outstanding intellect. It was not plain sailing for Bachmann either at the Group’s meetings. She herself, as a young Austrian on her first visit to Germany, was often ill at ease, feeling at one stage that she was among ‘German Nazis’. This was at the 1952 conference, the apotheosis of the Group’s and in particular Richter’s failure to respect the émigré experience and reflect on the Nazi past. Whether the poet Paul Celan, although a Jew, was accused of sounding like Goebbels when he read his poetry remains unclear. Seifert accepts that this did happen, while others see the story as apocryphal. However, there is no doubt that the other Austrian female prize winner, Ilse Aichinger, to whom another chapter is devoted, was met on Richter’s own account by silence when she spoke to him about the deportation of her family.
Two other writers associated with the Group deserve mention for very different reasons. Gisela Elsner received excessive attention, mainly for her striking looks, while her harsh satires of West Germany’s affluent society were often misunderstood. She identified with the GDR, a contributory factor in her suicide shortly after unification. By contrast, Griseldis Lindsay Fleming, who was partly of Scottish heritage, embodies one of Seifert’s major complaints: that the Group failed to nurture women writers. Richter, who liked to claim credit for discovering new talent, invited her to the 1964 conference. In the event, she was thrown to the wolves and returned to her Sicilian home in ‘despair’. Subsequently, she published very little and today remains largely unknown.
That other female writers with potential might have been similarly thwarted because of male domination of the world of culture and the Gruppe 47 in particular, is one of the central points of a concluding chapter in which Seifert sums up the period the Group existed. She speaks in harsh tones of the mystification of female writers and of a latent desire to destroy them at a time when increasingly, as Günter Grass put it: ‘die Frauen schreiben uns an die Wand’. (‘The women are writing us (men) into a cocked hat’).
Seifert certainly makes a convincing case based on the widespread research she has clearly undertaken. Moreover, the book is written in a readable style. Nevertheless, there has been controversy. The writer considered alongside Ruth Rehmann, Ingrid Bachér, has maintained that she never felt any kind of discrimination. It can also be pointed out that the conclusion overlooks things that are mentioned in the main text, for instance the help given to the GDR dissident Helga M. Novak by Günter Grass and the view expressed by Rehmann and Elisabeth Plessen, a latecomer to the Group and the butt of sexualised comment, that despite everything attending meetings had been worthwhile. These omissions are, however, minor blemishes in a work that deserves to be widely read. As for its subject, the Group has been described as a spectre haunting German literature. Seifert shows it is a ghost that keeps on giving.