This volume https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-030-95963-0 is now available in electronic and hard copy. Edited by our Leverhulme Visiting Professor Dr Lars Schmeink and myself, it contains fifteen chapters on recent German SF film, TV and books. My own chapter, ‘Dark Mirrors? German Science Fiction in the Twenty-First Century’, looks at recent German SF novels (Thomas von Steinaecker’s Die Verteidigung des Paradieses and Sibylle Berg’s GRM: Brainfuck), to analyse why and how they establish their dystopian worldview. But, in contrast to most of the contributions to this volume, I am also looking at the green shoots of positive visions (Tom Hillenbrand’s Qube, Andreas Brandhorst’s Die Eskalation, Judith and Christian Vogt’s Wasteland, and Andreas Eschbach’s Eines Menschen Flügel). These give us glimpses of “concrete utopias” even as they contemplate the destructive impact of human activity on our planet. I argue that these latter works demonstrate a radical rethinking of the purpose of writing SF in the twenty-first century, offering a “progressive fantastic,” and a new hope.
Since the turn of the millennium, German writers have increasingly engaged with moral and ethical dilemmas created by scientific and technological advances. But what can these texts tell us about the future?
You can listen to my take on this question in this podcast created for the Ilkley Literature Festival ‘Settee Seminars’: https://anchor.fm/ilkleyliteraturefestival/episodes/Ingo-Cornills—What-can-German-Science-Fiction-tell-us-about-the-future-e1ecnls
This volume, edited by my colleague (and Leverhulme Visiting Professor to Leeds) Dr Lars Schmeink and myself, will be published on 29 May 2022. It will provide readers with an up-to-date overview of the state of German SF in Literature, Film and TV.
https://link.springer.com/book/9783030959623
In September 2021, I will be presenting a ‘follow-on’ chapter to my book ‘Beyond Tomorrow’ at the Association of German Studies conference in Swansea and (as keynote) at the Gesellschaft für Fantastikforschung conference:
German SF in the 21st century tends to see the dystopian form as the ideal vehicle to explore the social and psychological consequences of scientific and technological progress. There is no point in denying that the ‘dystopian turn’ reflects the mood of our time, and that the first two decades of the new millennium have given rise to fears and misgivings about increasingly porous boundaries, conceptual paradigm shifts, and persistent global challenges that make our scientific and technological advances feel hollow. At the same time, one may wonder whether the endless depiction of depressing futures in recent SF may not in fact yield diminishing returns in terms of the intended warning function and instead convince its audiences to give up hope altogether. In my talk I will look at recent German SF novels (Thomas von Steinaecker’s Die Verteidigung des Paradieses and Sibylle Berg’s GRM: Brainfuck), to analyze how they establish their dystopian worldview. But I will also be looking at the green shoots of positive visions (Tom Hillenbrand’s Qube, Andreas Brandhorst’s Die Eskalation, Judith and Christian Vogt’s Wasteland, and Andreas Eschbach’s Eines Menschen Flügel). These give us glimpses of “concrete utopias” even as they contemplate the destructive impact of human activity on our planet. I argue that these latter works demonstrate a radical rethinking of the purpose of writing SF in the 21st century, offering a “progressive fantastic”, and a new hope.
It is 50 years ago that one of the leading figures of the German Student Movement was shot in West Berlin. He survived, but had to retire from the limelight and died 11 years later from the long-term effects of the attack. It is a moot point whether the movement and the country as a whole would have taken a different direction had the assassin missed his target. He didn’t, and the New Left had both a martyr and an excuse for its ultimate failure. 20 years ago, I contributed a chapter to Gerard de Groot’s book ‘Student Protest. The Sixties and After’ (London / New York 1998). In it I quote Rudi’s simple message:
Our life is more than money. Our life is thinking and living. It’s about us, and what we could do in this world … It is about how we could use technology and all the other things which at the moment are used against the human being.… My question in life is always how we can destroy things that are against the human being, and how we can find a way of life in which the human being is independent of a world of trouble, a world of anxiety, a world of destruction.
I had forgotten how much fun it can be to simply ATTEND a conference, to network, listen and shamelessly go idea-mining. While my brain is fuzzing with possible opportunities I see how important a corrective to the anglo-centric discourse will be. Still, many thanks to the brilliant organisers of http://unsettlingscientificstories.co.uk/imagined-futures ! If you are interested in the action, follow #ImaginedFutures
Professor Zygmunt Bauman asked a significant question in his lecture ‘Europe’s adventure: still unfinished?‘ at the University of Leeds yesterday. Has the Vision of the Future lost its attraction?Should we retreat, just because the enormity of the task scares us, and because our cosmopolitan world is not yet matched by a cosmopolitan awareness? My new research project: Beyond Tomorrow. German Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Century explores what German writers and thinkers can contribute to the debate, and in particular whether they can help us come to terms with the future: Zukunftsbewältigung.
The latest edition of the academic journal ‘literatur für leser’ is out now. ‘Forever Young? Unschuld und Erfahrung im Werk Hermann Hesses’ (Innocence and Experience in the Works of Hermann Hesse) features five essays in German and English by international scholars from the UK, Germany, Italy and Japan.
From the editorial:
Erfahrung, so der englische Dichter William Blake (1757-1827), kostet den Menschen alles was er hat. Für den deutsch-schweizerischen Schriftsteller Hermann Hesse (1877-1962), der dem englischen Mystiker in seiner Unbedingtheit auf vielfältige Weise ähnelt, trifft diese Maxime sicherlich im besonderen Maße zu. Aufgewachsen in einer pietistisch frommen Familie, wurde sein ‚Eigensinn‘ von frühester Jugend an systematisch herausgefordert. Eltern und Lehrer versuchten mit allen Mitteln, seinen Willen zu brechen: eine brutale Form der Erziehung, die der junge Hesse mit Eskapaden, Flucht und einem Selbstmordversuch beantwortete. Gleichzeitig wurden die religiösen Eckpfeiler, das Bewusstsein von Gut und Böse, von Schuld und Verdammnis, von Himmel und Hölle, tief in seine Psyche eingepflanzt. Das Problem einer dualistisch konstruierten Welt sollte ihn sein Leben lang beschäftigen und zu einem Gegenentwurf herausfordern, der die Vielfältigkeit der erfahrbaren Welt schätzt und gleichzeitig die Einheit hinter den Gegensätzen betont.…
Wie manifestiert sich nun Hesses Versuch einer Synthese von Unschuld und Erfahrung? Dieser in der Forschung bisher wenig beachteten Frage gehen die Beiträger in diesem Themenheft nach. Sie zeichnen eine Entwicklungslinie von Peter Camenzind (Maike Rettmann) über Demian und Siddhartha (Jon Hughes), Hermann Hesses Faszination mit Schmetterlingen (Neale Cunningham) bis zu Hesses Glasperlenspiel (Sikander Singh) auf und stellen sie in einen ideengeschichtlichen, psychologischen und philosophischen Zusammenhang (Mauro Ponzi).
Ingo Cornils (ed.), Forever Young? Unschuld und Erfahrung im Werk Hermann Hesses, special edition of literatur für leser, 38. Jahrgang, Nr.1/15, Frankfurt/M.: Peter Lang 2016, ISSN 0343-1657
Sometimes a day at the Hay Festival is like mainlining Ernst Bloch’s Principle of Hope. Already in a receptive mood by listening to a radio interview with Jimmy Wales, the co-founder of Wikipedia. Yuval Noah Harari inspired his audience with visions that used to be found in the sf books of Olaf Stapledon and Dan Simmons. Mick Ebeling restores one’s faith in humanity with his notimpossible projects. Karen Armstrong challenged widespread assumptions about religion and war. A utopian space or a jolly for the middle class – can’t it be both?
Hermann Hesse’s pivotal role in helping to set up one of Germany’s most renowned publishing houses, the Suhrkamp Verlag, has long been recognised. However, little attention has been given to the programmatic and philosophical influence he had on Peter Suhrkamp and his successor Siegfried Unseld. This article analyses Hesse’s lasting impact on his publishers’ views, especially their commitment to European and World literature. It charts the development of Hesse’s thinking on Europe, explores Hesse’s relationship with Peter Suhrkamp and Siegfried Unseld, and demonstrates how Hermann Hesse’s books, political writings, correspondence and more than three thousand book reviews contributed to the ‘Suhrkamp Culture’.
Hermann Hesses zentrale Rolle bei der Gründung des renommierten Suhrkamp Verlags in Frankfurt ist allgemein bekannt. Wenig erforscht dagegen ist der programmatische und philosophische Einfluß, den er auf Peter Suhrkamp und seinen Nachfolger Siegfried Unseld ausübte. Der vorliegende Artikel analysiert Hesses nachhaltige Wirkung auf das Denken seiner Verleger, besonders ihr Engagement für europäische und Weltliteratur. Er zeichnet die Entwicklung des Hesse’schen Denkens in Bezug auf Europa nach, untersucht dessen Beziehung zu Peter Suhrkamp und Siegfried Unseld, und zeigt, wie Hermann Hesses Bücher, politische Schriften, Korrespondenz, sowie seine mehr als dreitausend Buchrezensionen zur ‘Suhrkamp Kultur’ beigetragen haben.
in: German Life and Letters, Volume 68, Issue 1, pages 54–65, January 2015
Between Bauhaus and Bügeleisen: The Iconic Style of Raumpatrouille (1966) The German television SF series Raumpatrouille (Space Patrol) has long gained cult status, in German-speaking countries it enjoys a similar popularity as the original Star Trek series which was first broadcast in the same year. Much has been made of Raumpatrouille’s alleged militaristic and xenophobic ideology by critics who saw in it an awkward melange of undigested Prussian and Nazi jingoism and Cold War paranoia. What hasn’t been widely understood (or acknowledged) was that the series sought to subvert authoritarian traditions by means of humour and a positive outlook. In Raumpatrouille’s alternative world in the year 3000, people are still recognisably human. Individualism and conformism continue to be at odds. While nation states have been abolished, strict hierarchies remain in (world) government and the military. Here, individualism is suppressed, even though, and this has been ignored by critics and researchers so far, insubordination saves the day in each episode. Indeed, the series communicated very different messages: a vision of a world where mankind has overcome barriers between genders and between nation states. This concrete Utopia is evoked in the introductory voiceover in each episode, but finds its main expression in the series’ distinctive visual style. This style is futuristic and functional, reflecting a desire amongst the younger generation and the cultural elites to escape the sense of claustrophobia pervading the post-war era and the ‘no experiments’ attitude of the West German government. The use of modern materials in the sets suggests a deliberate break with tradition, and a conscious homage to Bauhaus clarity and transparency. Technology is the means by which unheard-of things are done in this imagined future, be it the ability to live at the bottom of the sea, or the routine task of travelling amongst the stars. Of particular interest in this essay are the innovative solutions the series’ set designers came up with to translate the technological revolution of the 1960s, which in turn heralded a much broader change in mentality, into a future setting. The incorporation of the latest industrial design and technology into an imagined alternative world, just months before the cultural and political revolutions of 1967/68 transformed the world for real, indicates a rare moment of confidence. in: Ricarda Vidal / Ingo Cornils (eds.), Alternative Worlds. Blue-Sky Thinking since 1900, Oxford: Peter Lang 2015, pp.283-302
In an attempt to counteract the doom and gloom of the economic crisis and the politicians’ overused dictum that ‘there is no alternative’, this interdisciplinary collection presents a number of alternative worlds which were thought up over the course of the last century. While change at macro-level was the focus of most of the ideological struggles in the 20th century, the real impetus for change came from the blue-sky thinking of scientists, engineers, architects, sociologists, planners, and above all, writers, who imagined alternatives to the status quo. Following a roughly chronological order from the turn of the 19th century to the present, the book explores the dreams, plans and hopes, but also the nightmares and fears reflected in utopian thinking in the Western hemisphere. The alternative worlds at the focus of the individual essays can each be seen as crucial to the history of the past one hundred years. While each reflects its particular moment in time, they also inform historical developments in a wider sense and continue to resonate in present culture. Instead of presenting mere mind games, building and the concrete realisation of the dream are crucial to all of them – whether that means the restructuring of the earth itself, the construction of the perfect city, the creation of an alternative society on Earth or on Mars, or the physical preservation of youth. The tension of dream and reality, of fact and fiction, which characterises all of these utopias is also represented in the interdisciplinarity of the volume which brings together contributions from the sciences and the arts.
Ricarda Vidal / Ingo Cornils (eds.) Alternative Worlds. Blue-Sky Thinking since 1900, Oxford: Peter Lang, 2014
Rainer Werner Fassbinders Welt am Draht ist ein außerordentlich vielschichtiger Film, der zu Unrecht von Kritik und Wissenschaft bislang vernachlässigt wurde. Welt am Draht ist eine visuelle Adaption des Romans Simulacron-3 von Daniel F. Galouye (erschienen 1964), die Fassbinder 1973 für den Westdeutschen Rundfunk als zweiteiligen Fernsehfilm realisierte. 2010 wurde die digital restaurierte Fassung auf der 60. Berlinale in Berlin und im Museum of Modern Art in New York einem breiteren Publikum vorgestellt. Die nach fast vier Jahrzehnten Obskurität endlich gegebene breite Verfügbarkeit sowie ein Cluster von neuen, durch Welt am Draht beeinflussten Filmen laden dazu ein, dessen künstlerische Originalität und langfristige Wirkung zu untersuchen. Hierbei sollen zwei Aspekte beleuchtet werden: Welt am Draht als wichtiges Bindeglied in der Geschichte der Science Fiction und des phantastischen Films, und als zentraler deutscher Beitrag zur Ikonographie apokalyptischen Denkens.
in: Veronika Wieser et. al. (eds), Abendländische Apokalyptik. Kompendium zur Genealogie der Endzeit, Berlin: Akademie Verlag 2013, pp.285-298, ISBN 978-3-05-005797-2
Listening to Patrick Ness at the Hay Festival I asked myself whether utopian thinking is only for the ‘young adult’ market. True, a modicum of innocence helps if one is considering what kind of world we want to live in, but it takes courage to still insist on the possibility of change when one does so from the vantage point of experience. William Blake knew it, Hermann Hesse explored it in the Glass Bead Game, and now Patrick Ness has taken up the challenge. Impressive!
You are only young once, they say, but doesn’t it go on for a long time? More years that you can bear. (Hilary Mantel)
It is 45 years ago to the day that one of the leading figures of the German Student Movement was shot in West Berlin. He survived, but had to retire from the limelight and died 11 years later from the long-term effects of the attack. It is a moot point whether the movement and the country as a whole would have taken a different direction had the assassin missed his target. He didn’t, and the New Left had both a martyr and an excuse for its ultimate failure. 15 years ago, I contributed a chapter to Gerard de Groot’s book ‘Student Protest. The Sixties and After’ (London / New York 1998). In it I quote Rudi’s simple message:
Our life is more than money. Our life is thinking and living. It’s about us, and what we could do in this world … It is about how we could use technology and all the other things which at the moment are used against the human being.… My question in life is always how we can destroy things that are against the human being, and how we can find a way of life in which the human being is independent of a world of trouble, a world of anxiety, a world of destruction.
I am currently writing a review of Alan Corkhill’s impressive new book Spaces for Happiness in the Twentieth Century German Novel. This reminded me that in Uwe Timm’s novel Rot (2001), the protagonist comes across a Marcuse quote that has lost none of its relevance:
Der Gedanke, daß Glück eine objektive Bedingung ist, die mehr als subjektive Gefühle verlangt, wurde wirksam verdunkelt; seine Gültigkeit hängt von der wirklichen Solidarität der Gattung ‚Mensch’ ab, die eine in antagonistische Klassen und Nationen aufgespaltete Gesellschaft nicht erzielen kann. Solange die Geschichte der Menschheit derart beschaffen ist, wird der ‚Naturzustand’, wie geläutert auch immer, vorherrschen: ein zivilisierter bellum omnium contra omnes, in dem das Glück der einen mit dem Leid der anderen zusammen bestehen muß.
It’s been twenty years since I completed my PhD thesis on the changes in mood and perception from English Romanticism to English Science Fiction. In the second half of my thesis, I analysed the works of the British Science Fiction writer Richard Cowper (John Middleton Murry jr, 1926-2002). I am surprised that there haven’t been any other studies exploring RC’s rich, intricate and beautifully written novels and short stories. RC was kind enough to congratulate me at the time, writing:
“Seers and Sayers” is a truly handsome production and I feel honoured to have featured in it. […] I especially relished the title which – if memory serves me correctly – was the one I thought up way back in the 60’s and gave to Jimmy Haverill’s book on the Romantics which led to his getting the assistant lectureship at Hampton. Thus, as the phrase has it, does the wheel come full circle…
Sadly, this monumental achievement (written by David Mitchell, transferred to the silver screen by Lana and Andy Wachowski / Tom Tykwer, and beautifully created by Babelsberg Film Studios) has come and gone without leaving a major impression on the British film-going public. I took the students from my ‘German Utopian Thought in Fiction and Film’ seminar and they were very taken with the way utopian ideas and imagery were employed in this production. I believe that both book and film will stand the test of time, and, like Ridley Scott’s much maligned ‘Prometheus’, give people food for thought for many years to come. Everything is connected!
I wonder how many people are out there agree with me that it is high time to connect the dots between Friedrich Hölderlin, John Keats, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Richard Cowper, and of course Dan Simmon. Anyone familiar with Dan Simmon’s Hyperion Cantos will know that the titanic struggle between the Core AIs and their creators (us) reverberates across space and time, and thus it is no surprise that the Romantics got caught up in it. Having written my PhD thesis on the works of Richard Cowper (who relies heavily on William Blake and John Keats), I am keen to explore all possible avenues from classics to cyberspace. On he flared…
When students in my German Student Movement seminar started experimenting with Prezi instead of the usual Powerpoint, I felt inspired to explore what I could do with a less linear, more dynamic and intuitive presentation software. I have done a dry-run a few weeks ago in my School and everything worked fine – the audience certainly seemed interested. Now for the real test – using a Prezi to help me talk to a paper at our annual Association for German Studies Conference in Cardiff: http://prezi.com/hvxmvd-2uu_9/not-dark-yet/
The material is drawn from Chapter 12 of my monograph-in-progress on the construction of ‘1968’ in Germany.
Let’s just hope they have a good internet connection…
With the integration of its core themes and narrative strategies into the mainstream, science fiction in its traditional sense appears to have lost its competitive edge and its innovative potential. At the same time, its critical elements have survived in the area of alternative history fictions, notably in German-language literature. This paper analyses three recent examples: Christian Kracht, Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im Schatten (2008), Wolfgang Jeschke, Das Cusanus Jahr (2005), and Rob Alef, Das magische Jahr (2008). The objective is to explore how a classical device of fantastic literature is employed to introduce utopian/dystopian elements and challenge the status quo. As a vehicle for subversive cultural criticism, German alternate history fictions prove to be both flexible and relevant.
in: Lars Schmeink / Astrid Böger (eds), Collision of Realities. Establishing Research on the Fantastic in Europe, pp.325-338, Berlin: de Gruyter 2012
The German television SF series Raumpatrouille (Space Patrol) has long gained cult status, in German-speaking countries it enjoys a similar popularity as the original Star Trek series which was first broadcast in the same year. Much has been made of Raumpatrouille’s alleged militaristic and xenophobic ideology by critics who saw in it an awkward melange of undigested Prussian and Nazi jingoism and Cold War paranoia. What hasn’t been widely understood (or acknowledged) was that the series sought to subvert authoritarian traditions by means of humour and a positive outlook.
In Raumpatrouille’s alternative world in the year 3000, people are still recognisably human. Individualism and conformism continue to be at odds. While nation states have been abolished, strict hierarchies remain in (world) government and the military. Here, individualism is suppressed, even though, and this has been ignored by critics and researchers so far, insubordination saves the day in each episode.
Indeed, the series communicated very different messages: a vision of a world where mankind has overcome barriers between genders and between nation states. This concrete Utopia is evoked in the introductory voiceover in each episode, but finds its main expression in the series’ distinctive visual style.
This style is futuristic and functional, reflecting a desire amongst the younger generation and the cultural elites to escape the sense of claustrophobia pervading the post-war era and the ‘no experiments’ attitude of the West German government. The use of modern materials in the sets suggests a deliberate break with tradition, and a conscious homage to Bauhaus clarity and transparency.
Technology is the means by which unheard-of things are done in this imagined future, be it the ability to live at the bottom of the sea, or the routine task of travelling amongst the stars. Of particular interest in this essay are the innovative solutions the series’ set designers came up with to translate the technological revolution of the 1960s, which in turn heralded a much broader change in mentality, into a future setting. The incorporation of the latest industrial design and technology into an imagined alternative world, just months before the cultural and political revolutions of 1967/68 transformed the world for real, indicates a rare moment of confidence.
forthcoming, in: Ricarda Vidal / Ingo Cornils (eds.), Alternative Worlds. Blue-Sky Thinking since 1900
This article examines the relationship between, and the importance of, myth and utopia in Hermann Hesse’s work, their development over several decades, and their significance for our understanding of the utopian. The question whether Hesse’s work tends more towards the mythological or the utopian has hitherto not been convincingly answered. I demonstrate that Hesse’s work initially oscillates between (Promethean) myth and utopia. This becomes very clear in Narziß und Goldmund, where the author engages with the problem of death. In Das Glasperlenspiel, however, Hesse uses myth to create a utopian moment. I argue that Hesse’s persistent search for the culmination point of human existence does not necessarily lead to transcendence, but rather makes possible a concrete utopia. According to Hesse, man is capable of reaching a new level of consciousness. His ‘theory of stages’ found itself on the sidelines in a time of collective ideologies but may become relevant in the context of a developing ‘global consciousness’ of autonomous individuals.
German Life and Letters, Vol.66, Issue 2, April 2013, pp.156-172
Following the global celebration of their 40th anniversary in 2008, the 68ers, especially in Germany, have increasingly been portrayed as a generation that has overstayed its welcome. With the portrayal of their increasing infirmity (of body if not of mind) comes a general disassociation with their former ideals and once radical political agenda. The revolution has not taken place, certainly not in the way they had imagined. What was once perceived as dangerous and strangely attractive to broad sections of German youth has become embarrassing, decidedly old-fashioned, and, in spite of occasional sympathetic portrayals in film or on TV, almost inexplicable to later generations.
Whilst their presence in the media has somewhat diminished, the 68ers have not yet disappeared from political and cultural debates: especially their literary production continues unabated, though, as will be argued, a new quality has entered their work. Their writing is deeply reflective, especially of their own increasing sense of being strangers in a strange land. The generation that hoped to die before they got old, that coined the phrase ‘Trau keinem über 30’ has left its ‘Prominenzphase’ during the Red-Green Coalition government from 1998 to 2005 and entered uncharted waters, a stage in life when one has one last chance to admit mistakes, forgive if not forget, and remember one’s defining moments in the light of a lifetime’s experience.
The texts I have chosen to illustrate my argument are Uwe Timm’s ‘Freitisch’, Friedrich Christian Delius’s ‘Als die Bücher noch geholfen haben’, Jochen Schimmang’s ‘Das Beste, was wir hatten’ and Bernd Cailloux’s ‘Gutgeschriebene Verluste’ (which made the longlist of the Deutscher Buchpreis 2012). Each of these writers has charted the history of their generation and its ever-changing ‘Befindlichkeit’ over decades, and their work continues to attract broad attention.
My paper argues that these chroniclers of their generation remain committed to the cause: the project of Germany’s ‘politische Alphabetisierung’ (H.M. Enzensberger), and an aesthetic programme that evolved out of the spirit of ’68. One last time they evoke the ‘Aufbruch einer Generation’, a movement that is unequalled in terms of its radical approach, but now with a wistful focus on its unfulfilled promise.
Paper for the AGS Conference in Cardiff, 3-5 April 2013
Ingo Cornils 