This collection of 16 essays on Germany’s literary industry—its Literaturbetrieb—aims to fill a lacuna in the field of German Studies by elucidating the often-neglected material conditions and market forces that determine the production of literature. An outgrowth of the annual Notre Dame Berlin Seminar, the volume offers insight into Germany’s literary institutions from a variety of perspectives. The book’s title, Die große Mischkalkulation, refers to “the calculus that determines the mix of profitable and non-profitable books” (7) that publishing houses must consider. How successful this model has been for Germany’s robust book publishing industry is the main takeaway from the lucid introduction to the volume written by its editors. They posit that the “productive tension” which has traditionally existed “between the freedom and creativity we associate with literature as a form of art and the real-world constraints of business that treat it as a commodity” (3) is far from waning. The contributions to the volume drive this point home.
The first piece, “Spaces that Matter,” by Geoffrey Baker, addresses the extent to which virtual spaces have allegedly supplanted physical location in the realm of literary production. Baker argues that this is much less the case than we may think, demonstrating that especially the city of Berlin has become a hub for the publishing industry while also attracting many authors, translators, critics, and others involved in the literary field.
Marike Janzen’s “Buying Autonomy and Citizenship: The Mischkalkulation in Germany’s Literary Industry” takes a detailed look at the off-set pricing that regulates Germany’s publishing industry. She posits that the practice of publishing some books at a financial loss often translates into a gain in what she calls “symbolic capital” insofar as the production of “good literature” promotes “liberal conceptions of citizenship” (35)—a conception that harks back to the creation of an enlightened Bildungsbürgertum. Not to be underestimated is the industry’s heavy dependency upon government subsidies, without which publishing houses could not afford to take such financial risks.
Heidi Madden’s contribution, “Destination Frankfurt: Book Fairs and Libraries,” offers a wealth of information on the annual Frankfurt Book Fair and on the myriad research venues, both physical and virtual, available to scholars of German Studies. Her overview of the many events sponsored at the Frankfurter Buchmesse that draw attention to the highlights of the year’s publications gives readers a sense of the scope of this largest book fair in the world, kindling a desire to experience it firsthand.
Madden’s article is followed by a collaboratively written contribution by former participants of the NDBS (Ross, Traylor, Chronister, and Wiethaus) entitled “Wirksam und doch unsichtbar? Zur Rolle der Literaturwissenschaft im Literaturbetrieb.” They argue that the rather complex cross-fertilizations between academia and the other branches of the literary field have so far been overlooked. An interview with Paul Michael Lützeler, Professor of German at Washington University (St. Louis) and founder of the Max Kade Center for Contemporary Germany Literature, about his personal experiences with Germany’s Literaturbetrieb concludes the contribution.
Next in line is David Gramling’s interview with the Black queer femme activist SchwarzRund. Author of the acclaimed 2016 novel Biskaya, an “afropolitan” (urban Black) text set in Berlin, SchwarzRund describes how incorporating Widerstandsmomente—or what she also terms Interventionsformen—fuels her writing and political activism. A cultural-studies student and workshop coordinator for students of color at the Humboldt University in Berlin, she occupies a unique position as insider and outsider to the academy. Her insights into the ivory-tower classicism that still prevails in German academe—in contrast to what she observes in the US—are especially revealing.
The interview is followed by Matthias Pabsch’s short but astute piece “Das Buch ist tot. Die Gutenberg-Galaxis im digitalen Zeitalter.” Comparing the anticipated “death of the book” with the erroneous belief in the early nineteenth century that the invention of photography would make painting as an art obsolete, Pabsch argues that “die Zukunft des Buches hat gerade erst begonnen” (112). Steffen Richter’s article “Der Literaturbetrieb im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung – und das vermeintliche Überhandnehmen des Betriebs über die Literatur” follows in the same vein. As the author of the 2011 monograph Einführung in den Literaturbetrieb, Richter applies his expertise here again to detailing the expansive changes that the processes of digitalization and globalization have brought to the literary field. Lamenting Amazon’s nearmonopoly on the book-selling market, he nonetheless argues that its (and other powerhouses’) influence is off-set by a number of positive innovations—from self-publishing platforms for authors to the e-book boom; from the proliferation of blogs to other venues for lay literary criticism—noting that a certain anti-hierarchical decentralization, and as such a kind of “democratization,” has significantly expanded the “inner circle” of the current Literaturbetrieb.
Volker Schlöndorff opens his essay, “‘I liked the book better:’ Literatur und Film,” by disclosing that over his fifty-year career he has adapted no fewer than sixteen authors to the silver screen. Particularly insightful is Schlöndorff’s discussion of his first cinematic adaptation in 1965, Robert Musil’s Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß, which exemplifies the filmmaker’s approach to literary adaptation. Claiming that Musil’s novella can be seen to foreshadow the Holocaust and the bystander complicity that facilitated it, Schlöndorff, in his own adaptation, shifted the historical lens by working through the same bystander complicity after the fact. He emphasizes the importance of one’s own life experiences for fueling what he calls the “innere Notwendigkeit” (136) that generates artistic creation and how (possibly even unfathomed) autobiographical elements necessarily underlie an artist’s work.
Victoria Bläser and Rolf Parr’s contribution deals with famous talk-show host Thomas Gottschalk’s short-lived TV show, Gottschalk liest? They discuss the reasons for its failure by comparing it especially to the highly successful Literarisches Quartett hosted by the late literary critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki, in whose footsteps Gottschalk hoped to follow. The next contribution, by Julian Preece, examines “Turf Wars, or Who Owns Whose History? The Rivalry Between Günter Grass and Marcel Reich-Ranicki.” This fascinating account of their long and complicated friendship and rivalry—dating all the way back to 1958 with their first fraught encounter in Warsaw—sheds light on the backstory that led to Reich-Ranicki’s scathing critique of Ein weites Feld in Der Spiegel, immortalized by the cover in which Germany’s preeminent literary critic is shown literally tearing the Nobel Prize winner’s book apart. Following Preece’s article is Thomas Scholz’s interview with Edo Reents, FAZ feuilleton editor, on the importance of “slow reading” and of creating a necessary distance between an author’s work and its literary critic, skills that Reents considers to be in decline.
“Liebe in Zeiten der Netzwerke: René Polleschs Kill Your Darlings! Streets of Berladelphia,” the contribution by Esther Bauer, shifts the focus to contemporary German theater. Her analysis of this successful avant-garde play (the title refers to a film-editing motto in which directors find themselves forced to delete favorite scenes) revolves around what Bauer posits as the utter commodification of human relationships in our current late-capitalist society. Her article is followed by editors Donahue and Kagel’s interview with Ludwig Haugk, leading dramaturg at the acclaimed Gorki Theater in Berlin, entitled “Was nach der Migration kommt.” Haugk elaborates on his theater’s creed of striving for a “post-migration” society beyond coerced assimilation.
The volume concludes with two shorter pieces dealing with translation. The first is Molly Knight’s translated excerpt from the autobiographical novel Chronicle of my Street by the Jewish former GDR author Barbara Honigmann, which Knight prefaces by discussing the difficulties of translating Honigmann into English, especially in terms of cultural code switching.
The last contribution, by poet and translator Donna Stonecipher, is an upbeat account of the challenges she faced when translating the lyrics of Gundermann, Andreas Dresen’s film based on the obscure GDR songwriter by that name. A longtime fan of Dresen’s films, Stonecipher had coincidentally seen the film the night before receiving the e-mail translation offer.
As the editors of this impressively diverse volume emphasize, its title Mischkalkulation reaches beyond the off-set pricing model in the industry to include the myriad other factors that come “into the mix.” Indeed, the volume itself is conceived as an eclectic “mix” through its juxtaposition of well-known and lesser-known scholars, authors, and other players within the field. Bringing Germany’s literary institutions into dialogue with American German Studies makes this transnational publication unique and a timely analysis of the material conditions that produce the books we teach.
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