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THE DISCOURSE OF THE OTHER IN GERMAN TRAVEL WRITING
1800-1860

BY

Kamini Prakash

A DISSERTATION

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Department of Linguistics and German, Slavic, Asian
and African Languages

1994

THE DISCOURSE OF THE OTHER IN GERMAN TRAVEL WRITING
1800-1860

BY

Kamini Prakash

This dissertation analyzes Nineteenth Century German
travel writing in the context of colonial discourse. This
aspect of travel writing has been largely ignored in German
studies, because Germany was never a major colonial power.
As a result, literary criticism has focussed on the academic
neutrality of the Germans, claiming that they did not travel
for economic and political motives but were driven by the
desire for knowledge. This dissertation, on the other hand,
asserts that while German travel accounts may not stem from
a colonial situation, where writing serves the purpose of
justifying colonial rule, they still reveal surprising
similarities with colonial accounts. They are a form of
cultural domination, in that they establish an intellectual
authority over other cultures, and have the power to define,
interpret and represent these cultures for a European
audience.

This dissertation examines three specific models of
contact in travel writing: scientific-exploratory, tourist-
leisure and missionary writing. It illustrates how non-
European cultures and their people are constructed as
Europe's essentialized and dichotomized Other through types

of writing and imagery. It also shows how travelers'

perceptions of the Other are limited by their conceptual
framework and mediated to a large extent by images produced
and propagated in Europe. At the same time travel writing
is not composed of a single homogenous discourse, but is
filled with contradictions, ambiguities and clashing
discourses. Despite the fact that German travelers rejected
the violence and exploitation associated with colonial rule,
and instead framed the purpose of their voyage in terms of
the pursuit of knowledge and the advancement of humanity,
the discourse, nevertheless, constructs the Other in a

manner that opened a space for colonial expansion.

To my parents

iii

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This dissertation would not have been possible without the
help of several peOple. My thanks go first and foremost to
my adviser, Dr. Karin Wurst, who always managed to find the
time in her hectic schedule to read endless drafts, give
critical feedback and cope with bouts of panic. I would
also like to thank my family for pushing me to finish when I
had all but given up. To my friends in E. Lansing, Vibha,
Shrihari, Dan, Ron and Neerja - thank you for being there

whenever I needed you.

iv

INTRODUCTI

CHAPTER II

1.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ON C O O O O O O O O O O O O 0

Contemporary Discourses on Race . . . .

The Science of Man . . . . . .
The Origin of the Species . . .
The Great Chain of Being . . .
The Missing Link . . . . . . .

The Unity of Man . . . . . . .

Man: A Product of His Environment . . . . . .

The Rise of Comparative Anatomy

The Evolution of Man . . . . .

Scientific Discourse and the
Carl Friedrich Philip Martins:
Details . . . . . . . . . . .
The Bavarian Context . . . . .
The Discourse of Improvement .
The Physiognomy of the Other .
The Hierarchization of the Races
Sexuality and the Other . . . .

The Homogenization of the Other

Other . . . .
Biographical

23
23
24
25
28
32
33
38
43

49

50
51
53
58
64
68
70

Manichean Oppositions . . . . . . . . . .
The Civilizing Mission . . . . . . . . .

Colonial Fantasies . . . . . . . . . . .

III Letters From The Orient . . . . .
Ida Hahn-Hahn: Biographical Details . .
Women Travelers and their Writings . . .
In Pursuit of the Past . . . . . . . . .
The Eternal and Unchanging Orient . . . .
The Ailing Orient . . . . . . . . . . . .
Unveiling The Orient: Representation and
Reality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A Prescription For The Orient . . . . . .
The Noble Savage . . . . . . . .
Behind The Veil: The World of the Harem

The Slave Market . . . . . . . . . . . .

CHAPTER IV Evangelical Discourse and the Other .

1.

2.

3.

6.

Origins of the Nineteenth Century Missionary

Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Carl Hugo Hahn: Biographical Details . .
Nama- and Damaraland . . . . . . . . . .
The Role of the Missionaries in Nineteenth

Century South West Africa . . . . . . . .

Missionaries: Propagators of German Culture

Establishing Order . . . . . . . . . . .

vi

73
77
78

82
83
85
89
94
98

102
108
113
117

125

136

137
139
140

142
144

145

7. Work: The Solution to all Evils . . .
8. The Domestication of Indigenous Women
9. Christianity: The Road To Prosperity
10. Religion and Language . . . . . . . .
11. The Infantilization of the Other . .
12. The Discourse of Savagery . . . . . .

13. The Undoing of Missionary Discourse .

couc LU S I on O O O O O O O O O O 0 O O O O O O

WES O O O O O O O O O O O O I O O O O O O O O

SELECTED BIBLImRAPHY I O C O O O I O O O O O 0

vii

150
154
159
160
165
171

179

187

197

225

Figure
Figure
Figure
Figure

Figure

LIST OF FIGURES

Pflanzenform des tropischen Amerika, l .......

Indianer OOOOOOOOOOOOOOIOOOOOOOOOO0.00.0000...

Indianische Geratschaften ....................

Die Baducca' in S. Paulo OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Tanz der Puris

viii

62
63
69
72

INTRODUCTION

Until the fifteenth century, the established center of
civilization lay not in the small states of Christian
Europe, but in the empires of the East: that of the
Ottomans, of the Mughals, Persia, China. The voyages of
discovery in the fifteenth century changed the history of
Europe decisively. Explorers like Vasco da Gama, Columbus,
Magellan and Vespucci exposed the world to the curious gaze
of the Europeans, making them aware of continents and people
they had never known to exist. Of course, they were
familiar with popular stories about wild men, hairy giants,
cannibals, and one-eyed cyclopes, but the new accounts were
more than mere stories or romance: they bore the authority
of the eye-witness. Whereas the fables were peopled by
fictive creatures and located in remote, imaginary spaces,
the travel accounts clearly defined the geographical
location and emphasized the difference between those who had
been there and those who had not, by appealing to the
primacy of the eye. Unlike the authors of romances, travel
writers could count on their direct and unmediated
experience of the Other1 to persuade their readers.

Travel, scientific exploration, colonial activity and
trade brought Europe into contact with other continents and
cultures. By the middle of the eighteenth century,

Europeans had left their mark almost all over the world.

2
The blank areas in European maps of the world had nearly all
been filled in and named. The emergence of the natural
sciences as a discipline in the eighteenth century led to
the rise of scientific-exploratory writing. Scientists
explored different continents, collecting specimens and
cataloguing them into a unified classificatory system.
Colonialism had also changed the character of travel. The
voyages of discovery had given way to inland exploration,
trade and transaction, supported by governments pursuing
national interests. The British had a flourishing colony in
India, the French and the Dutch guarded their interests in
Indo-China, the Spanish and the Portuguese had carved up
South America amongst themselves. An intricate system of
exchange developed between the "mother" country and the
colonies: cheap raw material had to be transported to the
mother country where it was processed. Ready made goods
were then sent back to the colonies, which ensured a market.
Thus the colonies supplied Europe, not only with raw
materials, like sugar, tobacco, cotton etc, and cheap labor,
but also with a market for the finished goods. Besides the
transportation of these goods, men and ammunition were also
transported to the colonies, to keep a tight rein on the
colonized. Consequently there was a wide variety of people
traveling during this period - sailors, soldiers,
administrators and their families, merchants, scientists and

missionaries.

3

Germany, however, did not possess any colonies until
the end of the nineteenth Century because of its territorial
fragmentation. Even after the dissolution of the Holy Roman
Empire in 1806 and the Napoleonic Wars, Germans remained
fragmented into several sovereign territorial
principalities, without any central power to hold them
together. The divisions between the principalities
inhibited trade and the growth of industry. As a result,
there was no infrastructure to support and finance
travelers. Therefore travel was often sponsored by foreign
governments. Germany only achieved the status of nationhood
in 1871. By this time the non-European world had already
been carved up by the other European nations into colonies,
protectorates and spheres of influence. German colonization
lasted barely thirty years from 1884 to 1919 and was limited
to Cameroon, Senegal, Tanganyika, South West Africa and the
Marshall Islands in the South Sea Pacific. During the time
frame under investigation (1800-1860), however, Germany was
politically and financially in no position to embark on a
colonial policy.

The lack of economic and political power in Germany was
compensated by a moral and intellectual authority. Since
Germany did not have a national or colonial interest, German
travelers were regarded as unbiased and capable of
exercising a disinterested and enlightened judgement.

Herder distinguished Germany from the colonial powers,

4
stressing the spiritual task of all Germans.3 The German
mission was not to conquer, but to be "a nation of thinkers
and educators."4 Germans, it was believed, did not travel
for economic and political motives. Instead, they devoted
themselves to the pursuit of knowledge and science in the
service of progress and the advancement of humanity.

Travel became synonymous with Enlightenment. It
disproved old beliefs and emancipated thought from dogmatic
authority. It was a means of gaining self-knowledge and a
new understanding of human nature through the direct
observation of other societies. The Enlightenment, however,
became dogmatic in turn, because it considered its
philosophy as absolute and universally valid. The quest for
comprehensive knowledge became a tyranny of universal
standards imposed on the rest of the world. Travelers
attempted to understand, assimilate, integrate and finally
subjugate the Other's cultural uniqueness and specificity
into the ideological framework of the Enlightenment. The
knowledge-building enterprise of the Enlightenment became
the basis for establishing European authority throughout the
world.

Travel accounts from all over the world had a moral and
pedagogical value, which was used by the middle class
intelligentsia to serve their own political ends in Germany.
These accounts were compiled and popularized through

publications such as E.A.W. von Zimmermann's Taschenbuch der

 

 

5

Reisen oder unterhaltende Darstellung der Entdeckungen des

 

18. Jahrhunderts (1803) and T.F. Ehrmann's Neueste Lander-

 

 

und Valkerkunde: Ein geographisches Lesebuch ffir alle Stande

 

(1811). Regarded as "eine unterrichtende Lectur,"5 they
were produced for mass consumption and aimed at educating
the public. However, the focus lay not so much on the
information about other countries but on the moral message
they contained. They aimed at making the reader a more
moral person, who after learning about the piteous fate of
the savage, would not only empathize with his or her less
fortunate brothers and sisters but also heed civilized
values.

Describing the life of the savage became a lesson in
moral guidance. The implicit warning in these texts
suggested that the readers could also degenerate into a
state of savagery if they did not repress and overcome the
primeval nature within man, through sexual restraint and the
gospel of work. By propagating middle class values of
order, discipline and industry, these texts served to
reinforce the moral self-assuredness of the middle class,
which sought to distance itself from the lower classes.

At the same time, these texts also challenged the
nobility. Unable to wrest political power from the nobility
by any direct means, the bourgeoisie fought the nobility in
the intellectual sphere. These texts encode a set of values

used by the politically paralyzed bourgeoisie to define

6
itself in opposition to the nobility. Whereas members of
the nobility were attacked as being insincere, superficial
and depraved, the bourgeoisie prided itself in being better
humans: upright, honest and virtuous. Its value system set
the bougeoisie apart from both the nobility and the lower
classes. Caught between two fronts, the middle class wanted
to share the privileges of the nobility, while maintaining a
social hierarchy, which would keep the lower classes in
their place. Thus travel writing was used for a political
agenda at home.

The years spanning the time frame 1750-1850 witnessed a
series of voyages made by German explorers and scientists
around the world: In 1763 Carsten Niebuhr left Europe for
the East (Syria, Palestine, India), returning four years
later. He was followed by Ulrich Jasper Seetzen in 1805,
and Johann Ludwig Burckhardt in 1809. Georg Forster
accompanied Captain Cook on his expedition around the world
in 1772-1775, Krusenstern and Langsdorff sailed around the
world in 1804, sponsored by Czar Alexander I. Alexander von
Humboldt (1800) and Eduard Poppig (1826) explored South
America, while Friedrich Konrad Hornemann (1797-1798),
Heinrich Barth (1849-1855) and Heinrich Lichtenstein (1803-
6) visited Africa. These are only a few of the Germans who
travelled during this period, and who recorded their
observations to share with those left behind at home. The

sheer number of publications falling under the category of

7
travel literature speaks for the immense popularity enjoyed
by this genre in the nineteenth century, for example: M.C.

Sprengel published 50 volumes of the journal Bibliothek der

 

neuesten und wichtigsten Reisebeschreibungen und

 

geographischen Nachrichten ... between 1800 -1814. Bertuch

 

published 65 volumes Neue Bibliothek der wichtigsten

 

Reisebeschreibungen from 1815 to 1832, and Widmann and Hauff

 

published 44 volumes of Bibliothek der Reise und

 

Landerbeschreibungen from 1835 to 1860. These writings were

 

held to be accurate and unbiased representations of
indigenous cultures.

The process of writing about and representing other
cultures is, however, rooted in the traveler's own culture
and based on the comparative method. Pagden addresses the
problems entailed in this method, which he sees as the
principle cognitive act of modern human sciences. What
cannot be compared remains incomprehensible. Comprehension
presupposes the translation of the unfamiliar into something
familiar by using "the principle of attachment." In the
process, however, the otherness of the country and its
people is not eliminated, but made accountable.
Simultaneously, the Other's practices and customs are
detached from their contexts and relocated in a new European
context, making them distorted and unintelligible to the
Other. Although this process facilitates a degree of

understanding (for the Europeans) and in a sense reduces the

8

distance between two cultures, at the same time it also
leads to the simple assimilation of the unknown or foreign
into existing European patterns of thought and perception.

Columbus, for example, translated the Taino ritual of
fasting and remaining celibate before panning for gold as a
means of acquiring divine favor. The Tainos, however,
observed this ritual for totally different reasons. They
regarded gold as a substance in a state of transition and
therefore potentially dangerous. Although Columbus used
what was familiar (fasting and sexual abstention) to
understand the unfamiliar (the ritual), he did not
comprehend the relevance of this ritual for the Tainos.
Instead, he interpreted the ritual according to the customs
of his own culture. This example illustrates the problems
of overcoming the incommensurability of cultures. They are
commensurable only through assimilation. It is not possible
to understand the world of the Other "in their terms"
without becoming one of them, since their terms cannot be
detached from “ours." Travelers had to make the unknown
familiar enough to become imaginable: the Other had to be

made like "us."6

All representations of the Other thus
entail the imposition of the traveler's conceptual framework
on the foreign culture.

Literary criticism exploring travel literature has been

extensive. However, most contemporary research in German

Studies has been predominantly generic and subject-centered.

9
In Die Reisebeschreibung und ihre Theorie, William Stewart
examines the genre of travel writing, tracing its
development from an autoptic model of representation, in the
service of science and the state, to a more subjective
model. He illustrates how the genre changed to serve the
interests of the rising bourgeoisie, linking the emergence
of subjectivity to the bourgeois struggle for
7

emancipation.

Die Erfahrene Welt by Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow emphasizes

 

the motive of self-exploration through the discovery of the
world and the subsequent expansion of one's horizons. This
descriptive study examines how travelers perceived and
experienced other cultures. It traces the developing
degrees of subjectivity in travel accounts beginning with
Marco Polo, through the Renaissance and culminating in the
eighteenth century. It shows how the impersonal, factual
style of the chronicle gives way to a more philosophical and
critical form of writing. The traveler, who previously was
a passive recorder of facts, now starts to reflect, to
evaluate and to question, resulting in a reevaluation of his
own values and categories. The impact this knowledge had on
Europe's understanding of itself is the primary focus of
this study.8 It does not explore the impact of this
knowledge on the cultures which were being studied.

Both Wuthenow and Hans-Wolf Jager differentiate between

the explorers of the Enlightenment (Cook, Bougainville etc.)

10
and the conquistadors of the New World. Jager states that
the explorers

... sehen die entlegensten Gebiete als rechtmaBige
Habe des Heimatlandes, ihre Schétze als natfirliche
Beute der eigenen zivilisation. Doch mochten sie,
rationalistisch erzogen und humanistisch gesonnen,
die fremden Gegenden nicht einfach ausplfindern,
ihre Bewohner nicht roh unterwerfen, sondern die
antipodischen Landern bebauen und die Eingeborenen

als Handelspartner gewinnen oder zu Untertanen der

eigenen Krone erziehen.9

While exploitation and subjugation of the indigenous people
are denounced, the claim to enlightened human ideals as the
basis for the expansion of European authority throughout the
world remains unquestioned.

My goal is to reexamine German travel literature as a
part of colonial discourse. The study of discourses shifts
the focus of research from genre and subject to language.

It shows the use of language as a tool for constructing
reality. What matters is not how one literary form differs
from another, but how writing works, in whatever form, to
produce knowledge about other cultures. Historically
speaking, colonial discourse consists of the languages
employed by the representatives of colonial powers for the
purpose of establishing authority over their colonies during
the period of imperial expansion that culminated at the end
of the nineteenth century. However, since there was no

colonial situation in the German context under

ll

investigation, I have extended this definition beyond the
colonial period and the representatives of colonial powers.
Rather, colonial discourse is determined by its function:
the establishment of authority through the demarcation of
identity and difference, i.e. by constructing a binary
opposition between the Self and its Other, where the Self
occupies the positive pole and the Other is designated the
negative pole.10

It is true that German travel accounts did not claim
any transformative potential and differed considerably from
overtly imperial articulations of conquest. But they do
bear surprising similarities to patterns of thought and
language in writings, which stem from a colonial situation
and which were used for justifying colonial rule. They
represent a form of cultural domination, by which the
traveler establishes an intellectual authority over other
cultures and acquires the power to define and interpret
these cultures for a European audience.

This dissertation analyzes the writings of three German
travelers, a scientist, a countess and a Lutheran
missionary, who travelled to different parts of the world in
the first half of the nineteenth century. It is not
concerned with the comparison of these accounts with the
“facts" or the ”truth." Instead it demonstrates the way
these writers perceived and constructed the indigenous

jpeople for their German audience. Although the travelers I

12
have selected come from varied personal backgrounds and the
peoples they studied span the earth from Turkey through
Africa to Brazil, there are striking similarities between
these texts in their use of language, eg. tense, tropes and
speech acts. These surface regularities illustrate that
travel texts, like all other texts, are written within
established conventions and cannot pose as transcriptions of
reality. Travel writing cannot be read as a simple account
of a journey, a country and a narrator, but must be seen in
light of contemporary discourses which shaped them, and
which they, in turn, shape. The travel accounts analyzed in
this dissertation illustrate three moments of a larger
discursive phenomenon.

Several studies, influenced by Foucault, have
problematized the concept of knowledge as a representation
of reality. As Ronald Inden points out, this
representational view of knowledge assumes that "true"
knowledge mirrors a separate reality which the knower, eg.
the scholar, transcends. It does not take into account that
the knower is in fact situated in that reality, claiming
instead that this knowledge is objective truth. It ignores
the specific historical context under which these
representations and descriptions are produced: the social,
economic and political relationship between the knower and
the known. As a result, a hierarchical relationship is

produced between the two, which privileges the knowledge of

13
the scholar, while subjugating the knowledge of those being
studied. Thus the knowledge of the knower is not an
"accurate" representation of external reality. It remains
partial, often relying on previous accounts. It can be seen
as an artificial construct, but one which actively
ll

participates in the construction of reality.

Edward Said's book Orientalism is a critical study of

 

western knowledge about the Orient. Orientalism, according
to Said, is a body of disciplinary knowledge produced by
texts and institutional practices, responsible for
generating authoritative and essentializing statements about
the Orient, and characterized by a mutually supporting
relationship between power and knowledge. This body of
knowledge imposes a disciplinary order over the Orient,
turning it into a province of western learning and codifying
it in texts, which speak for the "true" Orient. Said also
discusses a second order of knowledge, which comprises of a
collection of fantasies, popular images, myths and
specialized vocabulary used to talk about the Orient. This
Orient is a site of romance, haunting landscapes and
intoxicating experiences. In both cases, knowledge of the
Orient is not based on real encounters but culled from
representations, which do not correspond with the external
referent.12

Mary Louise Pratt focuses on travelers in South America

and Africa, outlining several phases of accounts from the

14
"contact zone."13 She traces the change in travel
writings during the era of scientific travel, from survival
stories to scientific exploratory writing. Whereas
indigenous people play a prominent role in survival stories
through dialogue and interaction, scientific exploratory
writing merely describes them, as it would describe a
specimen. They are not affirmed as cultural beings with
their own distinct history. Instead the naturalist extracts
each specimen out of its surroundings and integrates it into
European-based patterns of global unity and order. Thus the
global classificatory project of science, which claimed to
be non-exploitative, amounts to an act of appropriation.
This type of writing marginalizes the human element by
textually depopulating landscapes and relocating indigenous
people to separate chapters or "textual homelands"
describing local manners and customs. Encounters between
the traveler and the indigenous people are textualized as an
enumeration of pregiven traits (eg. the Bushman is cheerful
and lively ...), instead of being anchored in a historical
context or in an observing self. No textual space is
provided for the actual interaction which often entailed
exploitation, violence and mutual dependency. The observer
is depicted as an innocent producer of information, a
”disembodied eye." This self-effacement of the observer
gives the text the authoritative, scientific status it

requires for making its information "natural" and therefore

15
"true." It is not seen as a product of a European

14 Johannes Fabian studies the same

discipline.
phenomenon from an anthropological perspective and explains
how anthropology makes its object by placing it in a time
other than the present of the producer of the discourse.
This "denial of coevalness" prevents communication between
the anthropologist and his subject, resulting in a monologic
discourse, in which the subject is silenced.15
Western writings about other countries, however, do not
consist of only one single discourse. These texts are more
complex and often contain several discourses which undermine
each other. As Sara Mills demonstrates in her study of
writings by British women travelers, this is especially
evident in the case of women travelers, where colonial
discourse and the discourse of femininity intersect. The
writer has to negotiate various discursive constraints and
decide whether she wants to adopt a position of authority
(eg. the adventure-hero), as determined by the conventions
of the genre, or whether she should adopt a more self-
effacing feminine stance.16
Said demonstrates the systematic and invariant nature
of Oriental discourse. This view of Oriental discourse has
been criticized by Dennis Porter as too monolithic and
consistent. According to Porter, Said does not leave room

for the emergence of an alternative discourse within the

given dominant hegemonic formation. Orientalism is not the

l6
unified discourse that Said describes, but is made up of
diverse elements which both contest and affirm the dominant
discourses and other discourses of which it is composed.17
Lata Mani and Ruth Frankenberg also disagree with Said's
definition of Orientalism as "a monolithic, undifferentiated
and uncontested Western imposition." They argue instead for
a theory of positionality, stating that "there is no
universality in the standpoints of authors. Rather, each of
us is located very specifically ... within discourses of
power/knowledge. We write from these positions." 18

So, although travel texts do share several common
features, they do not constitute a homogenous entity. Texts
are produced in situations, where there are several forces
at work at the same time: textual, economic, social,
political, historical and personal. These varied factors
act as constraints on the writing process. Each situation
evokes and develops corresponding narrative and descriptive
techniques particular to its specific setting and historical
context. It is these elements of each text that must be
considered.

At the same time, the genre of travel writing is guided
by certain conventions. Sara Mills analyzes the conventions
of travel writing as a whole and identifies three distinct
textual features of the genre, which she classifies as the

narrative figure, the narrative incidents and description of

objects (74). As Mary Louise Pratt observes, travel texts

l7
oscillate between two basic types of narrative figures: the
"manners and customs" (or scientific-objectivist) narrator
and the "sentimental" narrator. The former is found more
commonly in scientific-exploratory writing, where the
narrator is absent and observations emanate from "an unknown

site behind the speaking I.” 19

The authority of these
texts is based on the informational and scientific nature of
its content. Little account of human interaction is given.
Instead, landscapes are described as if empty of people, who
appear only as traces (143). The "sentimental" travel text,
on the other hand, foregrounds the narrator and portrays the
indigenous inhabitants as part of the dramatic narrative.
These texts are more dialogic in nature (151). In both
cases, however, the real agenda of European expansionism is
mystified.

Certain narrative incidents are so common in travel
writing that they have become part of the genre, eg. the
moment of arrival, the panorama, where the narrator imagines
a landscape transformed by European industry. Similarly,
there are informational constraints and taboo topics which
determine the kind of information that can or cannot be
included. Another common method, especially in scientific
exploratory writing, is the descriptive dissection of the
anatomy. The Other is not described as an individual, but

as a list of features, composed of separate body parts.

18
These detailed descriptions reduce the Other to the status
of objects, deprived of all traces of humanity.

The texts explored in the following chapters represent
different models of "contact" in travel writing: scientific-
exploratory, tourist-leisure and missionary writing. German
travelers in the first of the nineteenth century were
predominantly from these three areas. Excluded are the
military, administrative and commercial fields, which were

not well represented by Germans. Reise in Brasilien (1823-

 

1831) written by Carl Friedrich Philip von Martins, records
the observations of a natural scientist sent on an
expedition to Brazil by King Maximilian Joseph I. The
scientific discourse is characterized by detailed
descriptions of the Other, who serves the scientist as a
specimen, waiting to be catalogued into European-based
patterns of knowledge. The scientific status of the text
gives it the intellectual authority to pose as the truth.
Although well-known in his field, Martius has never been
discussed as a travel writer, despite the fact that he is
more typical of the naturalist of the time than someone of
the stature of Humboldt. Humboldt's unique personality, his
image as the great man of science overshadows everything
else in his writings, making his individuality itself the
event. His works were appreciated more for their aesthetic
value rather than for their scientific-documentary value.

In contrast to the objective and impersonal style of

19

scientific discourse, my second paradigm, Orientalische

 

Briefe (1844), is a collection of "personal impressions"
made by the Middle East on the traveler Countess Ida Hahn-
Hahn. Hahn—Hahn has already been discussed by several
feminist critics, like Annegret Pelz and Elke Frederiksen.
Frederiksen concentrates mainly on the motive of self-
exploration and the category of gender in these writings,
ignoring the traveler's attitudes towards race.20 Pelz,
on the other hand, explores the ambiguities arising from the
encounter between "woman," who is marginalized within her
own culture and the "Orient," a colonized and domesticated
entity. She concludes, that Hahn-Hahn ultimately chooses to
remain an outsider to both cultures, criticizing European
norms, undermining Oriental images and at the same time

21

adopting ethnocentric stereotypes about the Orient. My

analysis, in contrast, demonstrates that Orientalische

 

Briefe is not very different from other colonial writings,
despite the author's gender. Hahn-Hahn employs the same
tropes and imagery that occur in colonial discourse to
construct the Orient. Even when she exposes and debunks
popular myths about the Orient, she remains firmly within
the framework of colonial discourse.22 Although the use
of certain tropes may differ slightly due to the writer's

gender, such as the Bedouins and the harem, their end effect

is the same.

20

Finally the diaries of Carl Hugo Hahn, a missionary in
South West Africa between the years 1837-1860 are governed
by evangelical discourse. This discourse is characterized
by the story of conversion, which emphasizes the savagery of
the indigenous people and simultaneously proclaims their
essential humanity, leaving the possibility of conversion
open. Conversion was not confined to just religion, but
presupposed a radical social and cultural transformation of
the indigenous people. The failure of the mission leads to
the undermining of evangelical discourse by a more
exclusionary discourse on racial differences, which
culminates in the request for colonial intervention.

In conclusion, these travel texts, like all
representations, are embedded in the language, culture and
institutions of the representor. The traveler's
perceptions of the Other are limited by his or her
conceptual framework and determined to a large extent by the
images produced and propagated at home. Although Germany
did not have any colonies during the time frame under
investigation, the writings analyzed in my dissertation can
be placed under the rubric of colonial discourse, because
they share the same language and tropes as writing produced
by representatives of colonial powers, whose function was
the establishment of colonial authority and the preservation
of colonial relations. These travel texts construct the

Other in a manner that Opened a space for colonial

21
expansion. Finally, these texts share certain common
features, but they do not constitute a homogenous entity.
Rather, they contain several contradictions, ambiguities and
even conflicting discourses.

In Chapter One, I will present some of the contemporary
discussions on race. The scientific study of human beings
led to the formulation of several theories which tried to
account for the differences between the races. Some of
these theories surface in the travel accounts, dealt with in
this dissertation, illustrating how they colored the
travelers' perceptions of the Other and shaped their field
of vision.

Chapter II demonstrates how scientific discourse
naturalizes racial hierarchies and colonial relations
through the disciplinary procedures of description and
classification. I will show how this discourse transforms
indigenous people from cultural and historical beings into
discrete entities of scientific enquiry, which are then
catalogued into European paradigms of knowledge. The
pursuit of knowledge for the advance of humankind underwrote
colonial appropriation, even as it rejected conquest and
subjugation.

Chapter III analyzes tourist-leisure travel writing. I
will demonstrate how Hahn-Hahn uses the same tropes and
imagery that occur in Oriental discourse. For example, the

Orient is constructed as a vestige of a glorious past, as an

22
unchanging tableau vivant, or as a scene of decay and
disintegration. These Orientalist constructions are at the
same time accompanied by a demystification of other popular
images and myths about the Orient. Hahn-Hahn unveils and
exposes the "reality" behind the facade of grandeur. She
adopts a characteristic authoritative stance over the Other
and there is scant room for an alternative discourse. I
will show how Hahn-Hahn remains within the model of colonial
discourse even while criticizing her own culture.

Chapter IV illustrates how evangelical authority
dismantles indigenous socio-economic structures and attempts
to replace them with German models. To this end it
constructs the Other as savage but also helpless and in need
of guidance. The resistance to missionary activity creates
a crisis of authority, revealing the missionary's precarious
position. I will show how evangelical discourse is replaced
by a discourse which emphasizes racial differences in order

to explain the failure of the mission.

CHAPTER I

Contemporary Discourses on Race

1. The Science of Man

Ever since the voyages of discovery in the fifteenth
century, accounts by travelers to all parts of the world
were making Europeans aware of the existence of other
peoples, differing considerably in their physical, moral and
social characteristics from their European norm. Even
though this awareness had existed as early as the first
century A.D. in the shape of wonderful stories about the
dogheaded Cynocephali of India and the Blemmyae of Libya,
who wore their faces in their chests, the newly gained
knowledge was no longer confined to the realm of fantasy,
but based on authentic eyewitness accounts. Not only did
the discovery of America in 1492 decenter Europe, it also
posed a challenge to the existing conceptual and
intellectual framework in Europe. A new vocabulary had to
be invented to describe the novelties encountered and a
system had to be developed which was capable of embracing
the differences and providing an explanation for the
variations in humankind. The authority of the ancients was
replaced by empirical sciences, paving the way for the
scientific study of man in the eighteenth century. This new

science regarded man as a natural species, subject to the

23

24
same laws as all other natural phenomena and was based on
the techniques of observation, analysis and comparison.1
For the first time then the interest in other peOple, their
societies and cultures assumed the status of scientific
knowledge.)

This chapter deals with some of the contemporary
discussions on race, which tried to come to terms with the
category of difference. The discourse on race encompasses a
whole range of views represented by the monogenists and the
polygenists, the environmentalists, the biological

determinists, and the social evolutionists.

2. The Origin of the Species

By the eighteenth century a number of different
theories on race and culture had evolved, based on the
reports sent home by travelers. These theories revolved
around the basic question of origins: whether the Negro or
American belonged to the same human species as the white
race. The monogenists ascribed a common origin to all
humanity, stressing the essential unity of humankind. Their
arguments were based on the official origin myth found in
Genesis, according to which all human beings had descended
from Adam. They pointed to the similarities between the
different races and explained the variations as culturally
or geographically determined. The polygenists can be traced

back to the Preadamites of the sixteenth century, who defied

25
the orthodox point of view by daring to question the
existence of one father for all humankind.2 They
attributed variations between the races to their separate
origins, pointing to the great diversity of cultures as
evidence and counteracting diffusionist theories by showing
the impossibility of crossing the geographical distances
that separate continents.3 In the eighteenth century,
however, this theory became a tool in the hands of those who
insisted on the innate inferiority of other races, asserting
that they were members of a different species. The ideas of
monogenists and polygenists, taken at one level, are opposed
to each other. But these ideas converged with regard to the
position of the Other vis-a-vis the European. Whether part
of the same family or not, the Other was a lower order of

creation.

3. The Great Chain of Being

Western thought on nature was deeply influenced by the
idea of the Great Chain of Being, according to which the
universe was:

composed of an ... infinite number of links
ranging in hierarchical order from the meagerest
kind of existents, ... through "every possible"
grade up to the ens perfectissimum ... every one
of them differing from that immediately above and
that immediately below it by the ”least possible"
degree of difference.

26
In other words, the chain is a metaphor which constructs
nature as a scale, which progresses from the simplest to the
most complex organism by imperceptible degrees, resulting in
a hierarchy of species.

Classifications, describing and comparing the
characteristics of different organisms and placing them
under a category became the main task of naturalists. The
systematization and ordering of nature resulted in fixed and
well-defined species. This rigid scheme was not without its
opponents, who saw the divisions between the species as
arbitrary and questioned their validity on the grounds of
the principle of continuity. They argued, that the
gradations from one specie to another were so imperceptible,
that it was impossible to determine the boundaries. The
classification of nature could only be artificial, because
the diversity of nature defied any classificatory scheme.
There were bound to be objects belonging to more than one
class. Forster observed: "die Ordnung der Natur folgt
unseren Eintheilungen nicht, und sobald man ihr dieselben
aufdringen will, verfallt man in Ungereimtheiten."S
Others, like the German anatomist Blumenbach argued that the
gaps between the species were too great, for example the
chasm between man and apes. But for the most part,
naturalists viewed their task as searching for the ”missing
links" in the chain, and thus supplying empirical evidence

to complete the grand scheme of things.

27

The point in the scale which attracted the most
attention in the late eighteenth century was the interval
between man and the higher apes. Already in 1699, Edward
Tyson had concluded that the "pygmie" i.e. chimpanzee was in
fact intermediate between man and the monkey.6 Linnaeus
closed the link by categorizing man and apes under the same
species of Quadrupedia, causing an indignant Thomas Pennant,

the author of A History of andrupeds, to protest: "my

 

vanity will not suffer me to rank mankind with Apes,
Monkies, Maucaucos, and Bats, the companions Linnaeus has
allotted us ..." (Slotkin 186). But the similarities
between apes and man were too great to ignore.

The Great Chain was now applied to human variations in
an attempt to enhance the distance between the apes and the
Europeans: the different races of mankind formed a "natural"
scale, with the Europeans on top and the African at the
bottom. The numerous gradations between the two extremes
were filled up by all the other races, keeping the European
at a safe distance from the apes. This process of
classification and hierachization is illustrated in the
works of the naturalist, Martius, who places the various
races and tribes in Brazil in their appropriate place on the
scale on the basis of their appearance. The criterion for a
higher position on the scale was aesthetic. Aesthetic
conventions were color coded: the Black embodied the

antithesis of the Greek aesthetic ideal, while white came to

28
represent beauty, order, and civilization. AS the
anatomist, Charles White, states: "ascending the line of
gradation, we come at last to the white European; who being
most removed from the brute creation, may, on that account,
be considered as the most beautiful of the human race"
(Slotkin 220).

Aesthetics were linked with the moral character of the
person. In "Of the Harmony Between Moral and Physical
Beauty," Lavater states: "Beauty and ugliness have a strict
connection with the moral constitution of the man. In
proportion as he is morally good, he is handsome; and ugly,

in proportion as he is morally bad."7

The hierarchy of the
races, based on both external and internal factors was thus

made to appear natural.

4. The Missing Link

Several naturalists saw the "Hottentots" as the
connecting link between anthropoids and homo sapiens. These
speculations about the relationship between human beings and
apes created widespread interest in the science of anatomy.
Bodies needed for dissection and observation were in great
demand in Europe, so that theories could be formulated,
denied or confirmed.

One of the earlier theories that linked the African to
the apes was Camper's facial angle (17708). The facial

angle was supposed to serve as a measure of intelligence and

29

reveal the gradual gradations from animal to man. The angle
of the line leading from the forehead to the upper lip
increases, according to Camper, from forty-two degrees (a
monkey with a tail) to fifty-eight in an orangutan, to
seventy in a black man, to eighty or ninety in a European
man and to one hundred in ancient Greece.8

This theory seemed to confirm the prejudices regarding
Blacks and their proximity to the apes on the graded scale
of being. The mouth was regarded as an organ which took
care of the baser needs of humans. Fichte comments,
"Wie das Individuum, oder, die Race, noch thierischer, und
selbstsfichtiger ist, drangt er [der Mund] sich hervor; wie
sie edler wird, tritt er zurfick, unter den Bogen der
denkenden Stirne."9 A depressed forehead and a protruding
jaw, indicated a greater degree of animality in the
individual. The Black was thus associated with the ape, by
virtue of his or her profile, which became the outward
measure of inner animality and intelligence. Placed on the
bottom of the scale, the inferiority of the Black is
naturalized in the language of science. The impact of such
theories on travelers is evident in Hahn-Hahn's comments
about the Ethiopian slaves. She interprets their facial
features as evidence of their lack of intelligence.

The German anatomist Samuel von SOmmerring also tried
to prove the similarities between apes and the Black. In

his fiber die kOrperliche Verschiedenheit des Negers vom

 

30

Europaer published in 1785, he defines his main objective:
"Ob im Baue und in der Einrichtung des K6rpers sich etwan
Verschiedenheiten ... finden, die dem Mohren eine niedrigere
Staffel am Throne der Menschheit anzuweisen scheinen." 10
Drawing an analogy between gender and race, he explains that
just as a boy is superior to a girl, based on his physical
strength, so too there must be a reason for the differences
between Europeans and Blacks. As Nancy Stepan points out,
this analogy equating ”lower" races with the female type of
human species occupied a strategic place in scientific
theory about human variation. Women and the lower races, it
was said, shared low brain weights, narrow skulls,
protruding jaws, and childlike temperaments. These are just
a few of the similarities "discovered" by scientists. But,
rather than presenting a preexisting nature, these analogies
help to construct nature and produce new knowledge by
establishing similarities and allowing us to see those
similarities in the first place.11

Sbmmerring paid particular attention to what he
considered deeper and fundamental differences caused by
nature. After dissecting and examining several black
corpses, both male and female, he concludes, "Der Mohr
scheint dem Affen naher als der Europfier," but adds that
despite this they are "wahre Menschen, so gut wie wir, ...

so gut, und nichts weniger Menschen, als eine der schdnsten

Griechinnen" (xx). Although "der Mohr“ is elevated to the

31
highest position in the scale, Sbmmerring is still hard
pressed to say whether primordial man ascended to the status
of the European or degenerated to become a negro ["ob der
ursprfingliche Mensch ... zum Europaer veredelt, oder zum
Neger ausgeartet sey"] (79).

Supplementing his observations with those made by
various travelers, Sémmerring illustrates the animality
present in several features of the Black, emphasizing the
well-developed sensory organs, like the nostrils and the
ears, the stronger teeth, the larger, more prominent jaw and
the proportionally depressed forehead. He cites Herder's
observations regarding the structural differences between
animals and humans in support of his thesis (27). For
Herder, the mouth and the teeth are no longer important to
man, who has been bestowed with reason and speech. This
shift in functions is reflected in the organization of man:
“... der Mund, der am Kopfe des Thiers noch immer der
vorstehende Theil war, [tritt] unter die hbhere Organization
des Antlitzes zuriick."12 In man, the forehead becomes the
“Tempel jugendlich-schdner und reiner Menschengedanken"
(129). SOmmerring applies these criteria to Blacks and
since their features do not conform to the Greek aesthetic
ideal, described by Herder, they are declared
"affenahnlich." In this manner Sbmmerring is able to
convince his friend and critic of the scale of nature,

Forster, that indeed: "alles in der Schdpfung durch Nfiancen

32
zusammenhéngt" (Forster 141). Thus the similarities between
the Black and the ape are seen as a fact of nature,

symbolized by the chain of being.

5. The Unity of Man

But not everyone had such implicit faith in the chain.
Blumenbach rejected the graded scale of human races, arguing
that the gulf between man and all other animals was too

great. In his book, On the Natural Variety of Man,

 

Blumenbach placed man in a new category, called Bimana in
contrast to the earlier Linnaean classification of

13 He illustrated the difference between man

Quadrumana.
and animals, based on physical characteristics, such as the
erect posture, unique to man and his consequent two-
handedness (164). He also discusses the "endowments of the
mind,“ the primary feature being the faculty of reason.
Whereas animals are furnished with instincts, in order to
protect themselves, all man's instincts are artificial,
making him dependent on society and education. These
external factors "cultivate the dormant germ of reason,"
which compensates for all the defects in which animals seem
to have an advantage over man (82). Speech is the work of
reason alone. The "pygmy" speaks although it is destitute
of reason, but "it cannot discourse, nor make use of

abstract terms, its words are rather directed to the

concrete things about which it speaks" (184). Blumenbach

33
also asks whether brutes have the same affections of the
mind as man. Are they capable of expressing joy and sorrow?
In this manner, Blumenbach emphasized the similarities
between all human beings. In contrast to Sdmmerring, he
did not regard races as sharply divergent from one another
and tried instead to show that racial characteristics, eg.
color (110) and shape of skulls (114) are fluid and
variable, determined by the environment, rather than
biologically innate.

The distinguishing features between humans and animals,
however, provided travelers with a vocabulary for writing
about the Other. Several travelers, including Hahn and
Martius, questioned whether indigenous people have human
feelings. Indigenous languages were regarded as primitive,
their vocabulary limited to concrete objects and devoid of
abstract notions. The European was rational, while the
Other was governed by instincts. Sitting on the ground was
evaluated as primitive and bestial. Thus, the very
characteristics which Blumenbach had identified as being
particular to the human species were appropriated by

travelers to distinguish themselves from the Other.

6. Man: A Product of His Environment
Building on racial classifications laid out by Bernier
and Linnaeus, Blumenbach divides humankind into five

principal varieties, but asserts, "No variety exists which

34

cannot be traced back to the same origin. They are all
connected with each other and run into one another by
insensible degrees." However, he regards the Caucasians as
the primordial species, which then degenerates in two
directions: through the American toward the Mongolian and
through the Malayan toward the Ethiopian (264). Like most
monogenists, Blumenbach explained these physical and mental
varieties in terms of environmental and cultural influences.

Environmental and cultural explanations for the
variations in humankind were not new to the eighteenth
century. They stem from the monogenetic model derived from
the Bible: descending from Adam and Eve, humankind was
divided by language at the tower of Babel and dispersed as
the tribes of Shem (Asia), Ham (Africa) and Japhet (Europe)
to different corners of the earth over the centuries, during
which they degenerated physically and culturally.14

Blumenbach adapts this argument to the contemporary
view of naturalism. Drawing an analogy between domestic
animals and man, he argues, that just as changes in diet and
climate produced variations in domestic animals, so too
changes in climate, diet and customs caused variations in
the constitution and color of man, which were then inherited
over the years and became "second nature" (203). He
discusses several causes for different skin color: bile, the
influence of the sun, the air and the climate. Diet is held

responsible for "the placid countenance of the abstemious

35

Brahmins and Banyans (sic) of India, and the atrocious
aspect, on the other hand, of the man-eating Botocudos of
Brazil" (229). The thick nose and swelling lips of
Ethiopians are attributed to the manner of carrying and
feeding infants on their mothers' backs (232). He also
cites several travelers, including Lery, Forster, Kolbe, who
confirm his suspicion that "considerable force is used to
depress and ... subdue into shape the noses of the new born
infants in various barbarous nations, such as the
Brazilians, Caribs, Sumatrans and Society Island" (233).

Thus physical differences between the races were
attributed to variations in environment, customs and diet,
rather than to biology. But the analogy between man and
animals provided the lens through which travelers
experienced and saw the differences between the races. The
Other was regarded as an animal, shaped by the environment,
and endowed with animal-like qualities.15

External factors did not influence only the physical
appearance, but also shaped people's behavior, morals and
temperament. This tendency is apparent in Linnaeus'
classification of the human species. His racial types are
characterized not only by their geographical location and
physical differences, but also by humoral, cultural and
psychological traits attributed to them. Thus Europeans are
sanguine, ingenious, governed by law: Americans are

choleric, obstinate, ruled by custom; Asiatics are

36
melancholic, haughty, governed by opinion, and Africans are
bilious, indolent, governed by caprice (Slotkin 178). These
traits were treated as fixed genetic types. Such
classifications arrange the races within a system of
identities and differences and set up a hierarchy of
Characters, thereby providing a paradigm for the rhetoric of
colonial rule.

Montesquieu (1689-1755) divided the globe into climatic
zones, attributing the inhabitants of these zones with
corresponding temperaments. According to him, the
inhabitants of the temperate zone are inventive and capable
of a high degree of civil organization, whereas the
inhabitants of the Torrid zone are imitative, lethargic and
more unstable. In the north, people "have few vices, many
virtues," while in the south they are "entirely removed from
the verge of morality" (Slotkin 396). Climatic theories
reified the hierarchy of human societies and naturalized the
process of domination, providing a justification for the
conquest of non-European people, who were identified with
the forces of nature.

Thus, the environment determined a person's natural
disposition. Man was seen as part of nature, subject to
nature's laws, like animals. Climate regulated a person's
morals, abilities and behavior, erasing differences within
these zones and producing a sameness. History was seen as a

function of the environment.

37

Unlike other living organisms, however, men are capable
of transcending the conditions imposed upon them by the
natural world. Even though savages may be victims of their
environment, there was room for improvement, since all men
were equally endowed with reason and able to benefit from
the civilizing influences of education, work and religion.
This argument embodied and allowed the pedagogic outlook of
the Enlightenment, which believed in progress and the
ultimate perfection of humankind. What distinguished the
savage from civilized man was not a difference in the
inherent mental makeup so much as the process of refinement
and civilization itself. Differences were environmental,
rather than hereditary.

However, there was a thin dividing line between those
who attributed differences to external, environmental
factors and those who regarded them as a result of biology.
Herder, an ardent advocate of environmental determinism,
illustrates this tendency best. According to him, nature
has deprived the Black of all the nobler gifts:

Die feinere Geistigkeit, die dem Geschdpf unter
dieser glfihenden Sonne, in dieser von
Leidenschaften kochenden Brust versagt werden
muBte, ward ihm durch einen Fibernbau, der an jene
Geffihle nicht denken lieB, erstattet. (236)

The Black was not made for "das qualende Geffihl hdherer
Freuden." Instead his whole physiognomy proves he was made

"zum tierischen sinnlichen GenuB." Nature had compensated

38

for the lack of intelligence by molding the anatomy, in
particular the thick lips, the breasts and the sexual
organs, for the pursuit of sensual pleasures. Herder
magnanimously appeals to his readers on behalf of the Black,
a victim of his environment: "Lasset uns also den Neger, da
ihm in der Organization seines Klima (sic) kein edleres
Geschenk werden konnte, bedauern, aber nicht verachten"

(236).

7. The Rise of Comparative Anatomy

The trend towards racial biology became more prevalent
in the nineteenth century with the rising popularity of
comparative anatomy. By measuring skulls, anatomists tried
to establish a correlation between race and intelligence.
Sémmerring attributed small brains to Blacks, based on the
assumption that they have larger sensory nerves, which take
up more place in the brain, like in the case of small
animals with proportionately larger brains. The perfection
of these baser faculties of smell and sound were not
required in the civilized state, and consequently the
European skull offered more space for a larger brain (63).

For the French anatomist Cuvier it was the
organizational complexity of the nervous system which
determined the position of an organism on the scale of
being, since the brain or the nervous system was the organ

of intelligence. This could be measured by calculating the

39
proportion of the area of the mid-cranial section of the
head to the face. The Black's compressed cranium reflected
his lower intelligence.

The new science of phrenology, founded by the Austrian
anatomist Johann Franz Gall in 1795 also saw human
intelligence and moral capacity in deterministic terms.
According to phrenologists, the different human faculties
were located in particular regions of the brain and were
reflected in the external form of the skull. The shape of
the head could be used as a sign of the internal nervous

organization and mental capabilities (Stepan, Idea of Race

 

21-28). Thus external differences, like head shapes, were
now treated as signs of deeper biological differences.
These examples illustrate how scientific discourse
constructs and naturalizes differences, precluding any
objective observation on the part of travelers.

In the Other, the intellectual characters were reduced
and the animal features enlarged and exaggerated. One of
these features were the sexual organs. The Other, in
particular the Black, was already attributed with a
"primitive" sexual appetite. Blumenbach confirms the
general assumption that "the penis of the Negro is very
large," on the basis of "the remarkable genitory apparatus
of an Aethiopien” in his anatomical collection, adding the
common belief that women when eager for venery prefer the

embraces of Negroes to those of other men (249). Precocious

40
venery is cited as a cause of large breasts and for a short
stature (257). However, Blumenbach points out that this is
common under every sort of climate. Forster and Langsdorff
believed that the bodies of the women in the South Sea
Islands were "debilitated by premature licentiousness."

Several travellers in the eighteenth century, like Le
Vaillant, John Barrow and Peron had described the so-called
Hottentot apron, a hypertrophy of the labia and nymphae. In
the nineteenth century, "Hottentot” women were displayed to
the European public and later they were dissected and the
genitalia preserved, studied and added to rare anatomical
collections. The most famous example of one such woman is
Saartjie Baartman, known as the Hottentot Venus, who was
exhibited in 1810 in London and then in Paris, till her
death in 1815, after which she was dissected and her parts
analyzed and described first by Henri de Blainville and then
by Cuvier.16 Similar dissections were carried out by
other anatomists throughout the century.

The German anatomist, Johannes Mfiller got his chance in
1834, when the museum was donated a badly preserved,
decaying but entire corpse of a female IKung (Bushman)
"acquired" by a Mr. Krebs at the Cape of Good Hope. In his
article "fiber die ausseren Geschlechtstheile der
Buschmannin," Mfiller discusses the controversy about the
Hottentot apron, which centered around the question as to

whether this phenomenon is peculiar to the IKung or whether

41

17 The

it is also common among the Khoisan (Hottentot).
former point of view was based on the evidence provided by
Governor Janssen, who spent five weeks among the IKung
studying the various facets of their lives, their customs
and habits and particularly "ihre besondere Organization."

This brief visit convinced him that all the women, without

exception, were afflicted with the apron, and that this

 

organ sometimes grew upto 7-8 inches in length. Peron, who
spent three weeks at the Cape, denies the occurrence of the
apron in the case of Khoisan women. His diagrams attest to
the veracity of his observation, and they do not match
Cuvier's diagrams. Besides, all the members of the
expedition were witnesses to the examination of the women.
Thus he concludes, Cuvier's "Venus" must have been IKung and
not Khoisan (338). Moreover, he states that the apron has
nothing in common with the female sexual organs of other
races: it is not an artificial or natural elongation of the
"Schamlippen," as suggested by Vaillant, and it is also not
pathological (321). In effect, all Peron does say, is that
it is unique to the IKung.

This obsession with the true owners of the apron seems
totally incomprehensible, unless it is placed in its
historical context. Mfiller himself unwittingly gives the
reader a clue, stating that the identity of "his" black is
clear: She is a "Buschménnin," because she was shot as

revealed by the bits of shrapnel found in her skull (339).

42
The resistance against the Cape colonists was largely on the
part of the IKung and not the Khoisan. Thus, it is likely
that by attributing the apron to the IKung, colonists like
Jenssen were trying to prove the polygenist argument of a
separate species. This organ was sufficiently well marked
to distinguish it at once from those of any of the ordinary
varieties of the human species. By proving that the sexual
parts were inherently different (and not, as claimed by the
monogenists, pathological malformations), they could prove
that the IKung were indeed closer to the orangutan than to
the Europeans, and thereby justify their eviction and
decimation. But these power relations are concealed in the
text through the discursive structure. The predominantly
descriptive style endows the text with an objective,
scientific stance.

Whether Khoisan or IKung, the black female (as indeed
all females) was reduced to her sexual parts. Although the
above discussion was limited to the "apron," anatomists and
pathologists were equally fascinated with steatopygia or
protruding buttocks and the clitoris.18

The obsession with skull measurements and genitalia was
essentially an attempt to fix racial differences as
unchangeable, permanent, hereditary features, based on
scientific evidence. It regarded man as primarily a
biological being, embedded in nature and governed by

biological laws. Culture and social behavior became a

43
function of biology. Race determined everything: in the

words of the Scottish scientist, Knox "it stamps the man.“

8. The Evolution of Man

The discussions about the physical nature of the Other
were accompanied by studies emphasizing the social and
cultural nature of the Other. These studies were based on
Western concepts of civilization and progress. They tried
to make sense of contemporary society in all its varied
forms in terms of evolutionary stages. This approach
presupposed a new understanding of time itself.

The eighteenth century witnessed a change in the
Biblical interpretation of history, according to which time
was conceived as a movement from the Fall to ultimate
Redemption through faith. This interpretation was replaced
by a more secular concept of history, which was now
conceived in terms of a goal-oriented unilinear progress,
culminating in the moral and spiritual perfection of
humankind, through the use of universal reason. Faith was
replaced by nature's laws or reason.

But progress had not occurred at an equal rate: some
societies had developed or evolved faster than others,
resulting in a scale of various degrees of civilization or
epochs. These epochs, based on economic factors, divided
societies into hunters, pastoralists and agriculturalists.

The various societies coexisting in the present, were placed

44
on "a temporal slope, a stream of time" (Fabian l7),
presenting the various stages of historical time. By
studying the Other, who still lived in an earlier stage of
development, philosophers attempted to reconstruct their own
past, and study their origins. The Other represented a
universal type symbolizing what all men had once been before
they became "domesticated." The indigenous peoples of
America and Africa were used to provide empirical data
needed to write conjectural histories of humankind. Thus
spatial distances were separated now by a temporal element
too, as suggested by the French philosopher, Degerando, who

wrote in The Observation of Savage Peoples that the

 

traveler, “sailing to the ends of the earth, is in fact
travelling in time, he is exploring the past, every step he

makes is the passage of an age." 19

This comparative
method which located the Other in relation to a specific
European past, disregarded the Other's own past, which
consequently assumed a stagnant and essentially unchanging
character in the minds of most Europeans. It is exactly
this aspect of anthropological discourse that Johannes
Fabian criticizes. By using time to distance those who are
being observed from the time of the observer, the
anthropologist removes the Other from the dialogical
situation, thereby reducing him to a non-person.

But if the Other is Europe's primeval ancestor living

in the past, he is also a child, as illustrated by Schiller:

45

Die Entdeckungen, ... zeigen uns Valkerschaften,
die auf den mannigfaltigsten Stufen der Bildung um
uns herum gelagert sind, wie Kinder verschiedenen
Alters um einen Erwachsenen herumstehen und durch
ihr Beispiel ihm in Erinnerung bringen, was er

selbst vormals gewesen und wovon er ausgegangen

ist.20

In contrast to the European who has evolved into a mature
adult, the Other has been arrested in its development and
remains an infant. Isaak Iselin voices the same sentiment,
when he states: "Ehe der Mensch ein Mensch wird, muB er
durch den Stand der Kindheit hindurch gehen. Dieses Alter
kann billig die Wildheit des einzelnen Menschen genannt
werden." 21 Turgot, an exponent of the theory of social
progress, also equates evolution with the ages of man,
stating, "The human race, considered from its origin,
appears ... to be an immense whole, having like every
individual its own childhood and its own stages of growth"
(Slotkin 358). So, although the Other is contemporary with
the European, he belongs to a period of human infancy. He
is like Europe once was.

This method did not doubt the potential of the Other to
ascend the scale of civilization. Human nature was
fundamentally the same everywhere, governed by the same
universal and natural laws. Thus the Other had the same
abilities and aptitudes as Europeans. It was only
historical time that separated them. With exposure to the

civilizing influences of Europe, and freed from the forces

46
of superstition, the culturally unformed Other could be
elevated to the level of his European brothers. As Isaak
Iselin, who believed in the perfectibility of man, asks:

Unsere Ahnen waren vor wenig Jahrhunderten noch
unvollkommene Barbaren. Wir kdnnen uns
schmeicheln, die Helfte von ihrer Barbarey
abgelegt zu haben. Warum sollten unsre
Nachkbmmlinge sich nicht von allen Uberbleibseln
derselben nicht befreyen kénnen? (XXXIV)

The fact that several ”Wilde" had in fact resisted being
forcibly "civilized" by rejecting European society, and
fleeing back to their own, did not diminish this belief in
"progress." Iselin admits to a "Widerwillen des Wilden
gegen einen besseren Zustand," but writes it off as a lack
of nobler feelings: "Es braucht eine gewisse Ubung, bis man
zu dem Geffihle der Vollkommenheit und der Schdnheit reif
wird" (300).

As Stocking observes, this concept of civilization tied
to progress, underwent a change in the nineteenth century.
Earlier it was regarded as the natural capacity of all men.
Now it became the unique achievement of the European race.
Although the scale of social evolution was retained, it was
no longer assumed that all men would ascend to the top.
Cultural contact had after all decimated the Tasmanians and
nearly wiped out the American Indians. Consequently, the

Other was moved from "the foot of a single upward ladder of

47
progress" to "the bottom of a diverging ladder of

degeneration." 22

Either way he remained at the bottom.

This chapter demonstrates how the naturalization of
humans had far reaching consequences on the study of the
Other. Humans, who were earlier seen as the center of the
universe, were now represented and studied in terms of
natural species and natural phenomena. Like the rest of
nature, humans too were products of their environment.
Climate determined both the organization and the morals of
humans. Travelers, conscious of their status as external
observers, did not see themselves as part of nature.
Instead the Other was represented as nature, or as animals,
shaped by their environment and endowed with bestial
characteristics.

Monogenists like Blumenbach ascribed a common origin to
all humanity, stressing the differences between animals and
humans, and explaining the variations between the races as
culturally or geographically determined and thus variable.
The polygenists, on the other hand, believed that the
members of different races belonged to a different species.
The systematization and ordering of nature resulted in a
hierarchy of fixed species, symbolized by the chain of
being. This scale was also applied to human variations.
The different races were placed on the scale according to
aesthetic and moral criteria. Several theories, like

Camper's facial angle, were formulated to prove that the

48
"Hottentots" were the missing link between anthropoids and
homo sapiens. Anatomists, like SOmmerring and Cuvier also
drew analogies between the Black and apes, stressing
similarities like the depressed forehead, prominent jaw,
enlarged sensory and sexual organs, and thereby "proving“
the intellectual inferiority and primitiveness of Blacks.
As the examples of SOmmerring, Muller and Cuvier illustrate,
the language of science was used to construct and naturalize
the differences between the races, legitimizing their
inequality, which was seen as innate and biological, rather
than contingent on existing power relations.

The philosophy of the Enlightenment, on the other hand,
believed in progress and the ultimate perfection of
humankind through the use of universal reason. However,
while postulating the uniformity of human nature, the
Enlightenment imposed its own criterion of development on
other societies, creating a temporal scale of epochs. These
epochs illustrated different stages of evolution. Whereas
the enlightened cultures of Europe belonged to the most
advanced stages, the others were relegated to Europe's past.
Since they had evolved at a slower rate, they also
represented the childhood of Europe.

In the following chapters I will show how these
discourses served as lenses to shape the travelers'

perceptions and construct their field of vision.

CHAPTER II

Scientific Discourse and the Other

The publication of Carl Linne's Systema Naturae in 1735

 

introduced a new breed of travelers to the non-European
world: the naturalist. This work, the first classificatory
system designed to categorize all species of plants in the
world, clearly defined the task of the naturalist. He had
to locate, name, and describe new species, gather specimens,
and build collections for Europe. In this way every specie
on the planet could be located and placed in its appropriate
spot in the system. The systematizing of nature became a
knowledge-building project on a global scale. By extracting
”specimens" from their unique cultural environment and
assimilating them into European paradigms, this global
classificatory project amounted to a cognitive appropriation
of the non-European world.

Collections of specimens acquired prestige value and
were displayed in museums and botanical gardens, with the
aim of not only educating but also impressing the public.
For the naturalist of modest origins, like C.F.P. Martius,
expeditions to South America were a chance to climb up the
social ladder.

In The Order of Things, Foucault explains how writing

the natural history of a plant before the Linnaean watershed

49

50
included litteraria like the virtues a plant was thought to
possess, the legends associated with it, its place in
heraldry etc.1 Linnaean scientific discourse, on the
other hand, was limited to a rigid classificatory system,
devoted to the detailed description of the elements and the
organs of plants and to their arrangement in a spatial
configuration. This "squared and spatialized development"
of natural history had consequences on scientific-
exploratory writing and the representation of the Other. In
this chapter I will analyze the works of Martius, to
illustrate how scientific-exploratory writing constitutes

its object of inquiry.

1. Carl Friedrich Philip Martius: Biographical Details

Carl Friedrich Philip von Martius was born in 1794 in
Erlangen, the son of an apothecary and an honorary professor
of pharmacy at the University of Erlangen, Ernst Wilhelm
Martius. He studied medicine at the university and later
worked for the Royal Bavarian Academy at Munich in the
capacity of an assistant to the conservator of the Botanical
Garden. In 1816 Martius was selected by the king of
Bavaria, Maximilian Joseph I, to go on an expedition to
South America. He was accompanied by the zoologist Johann
Baptist Spix. Spix was born in 1781, in Franconia, the son
of a doctor. He studied theology and later decided to

pursue medicine instead. After graduating, he joined the

51
Royal Bavarian Academy and later became the curator of the
zoological collections.

The expedition was sanctioned by the king and financed
by the state treasury. In 1817 the Austrian Archduchess
Leopoldina, who was engaged to the crown prince of Brazil,
Dom Pedro I, left for South America. Martius and Spix were
given permission to sail with her retinue. They were
instructed to explore the main provinces of Brazil and to
build a collection of specimens. After nearly four years in
Brazil, they returned to Munich and were awarded the

aristocratic title (Ritterkreuz des Zivilverdienstordens).

2. The Bavarian Context

With the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806,
Bavaria attained the status of a monarchy. Its coalition
with France enabled Bavaria to extend its borders by
absorbing several smaller principalities and ecclesiastical
territories. In 1813, however, with a shift in the balance
of power, it seceded from the Confederation of the Rhine and
joined the anti-French alliance of Russia, Prussia and
Austria. After the defeat of Napoleon, Bavaria joined the
German Confederation, a loose political association in which
most of the rights of sovereignty remained in the hands of
the member governments.

A reform movement had already started in Germany under

French hegemony. Foreign domination also gave rise to the

52

first calls for unity and nationhood. In order to quell
radical demands and secure the status of the monarchy, the
government promulgated a constitution in 1818, which
established representative assemblies elected by propertied
citizens, whose assent was required for the enactment of
legislation. Their purpose was to win for the crown the
support of the educated classes of society, and to safeguard
the monarch's position by forestalling demands for radical
changes. The king, in turn, was anxious to increase his
prestige and his reputation as an enlightened monarch, who
encouraged and furthered the advance of science. The
expedition to Brazil fulfilled this purpose.

A detailed account of Martius and Spix' travels have

been recorded in their work, Reise in Brasilien, published

 

in 1823-1831 in Munich.2 It consists of three volumes and
an atlas containing maps, pictures of the landscape, objects
of European curiosity, plants, animals and members of
different indigenous tribes. The great influence this work
had on the leading figures of the field is summed up by
Martius' pupil and biographer, A.W. Eichler, who compares
the importance of Martius' writings on Brazil with
Humboldt's writings on the rest of tropical America, and
includes them both in the canon for exploratory writing.3
Martius was awarded 12 medals, he was a member of 10
academies, and an honorary member of 52 natural science

societies and clubs. He has three monuments built in his

53
honor - one in the Botanical Garden in Munich, and two in
Brazil, in Belem and in Rio de Janeiro. He attained the
status of an expert on Brazil and was called "Der Vater der
brasilianischen lekerkunde."

I would now like to turn to Reise in Brasilien and

 

analyze the interplay of discourses which influence Martius'

perception of the indigenous societies of Brazil.

3. The Discourse of Improvement

Martius' first impressions of Rio are contrary to
European expectations of South America, and he hastens to
rectify this image, which reduces the whole continent to
"eine rohe, gewalthétige und unbesiegte Natur." This image
of America as primeval, savage and indomitable had been
invented by Columbus and propagated further by Humboldt for
European readers.4 Martins, on the other hand, reassures
his readers that Rio, the capital of Brazil, is not the
wilderness one imagines, but has been tamed by the
civilizing influence of European culture. European influence
is apparent in the language, the architecture and the
customs prevalent in Rio. In contrast to Humboldt, who had
idealized nature, Martins portrays nature as something that
needs to be subjugated and improved through European
intervention. Wilderness is interpreted as a sign of chaos

and neglect, the failure of human enterprise.

54

Nature is not the only factor that is in need of
improvement. This discourse also includes the "natives,"
"das bunte Gewfihl von schwarzen und farbigen Menschen" (90)
who remind the travelers that they, in fact, are not in
Europe, but in America. Again the collective noun "buntes
Gewfihl" gives the impression of a disorderly, chaotic throng
of people, undifferentiated by social hierarchies and
unrefined: "Die niedrige, rohe Natur dieser halbnackten,
zndringlichen Menschen verletzt das Geffihl des Europaers,
der sich so eben ans dem Vaterlande feiner Sitte und
gefalliger Formen hierher versetzt sieht" (91). In this
statement we see a reversal of roles: the European, who is
historically the agent, is depicted as the passive object,
whose refined senses are being assaulted by an aesthetically
offensive people. The discourse suggests that the European
did not gems to South America of his own free will. He was

involuntarily transferred or "versetzt". The absence of the

 

agent implies that the European is the martyr, the
persecuted, while the indigenous people are the persecutors
inflicting the pain.

The first Europeans to arrive in Brazil were the
Portuguese. In 1500, an armada under Pedro Alvares Cabral
landed by mistake in South America en route to India. The
region was promptly claimed by the Portuguese, since it lay
within the zone assigned to Portugal by the Treaty of

Tordesillas (1494). The approximately 2,000,000 Amerindians

55
who already inhabited this area lived partly by fishing and
farming in the tropical forests of the Amazon Basin, like
the Tupi, or they lived by hunting and gathering in the
drier savanna regions. The Europeans, however, were at
first attracted by the valuable red dyewood and later by the
deposits of gold and diamonds. The settlers turned the
existing economy from a subsistence, use-value economy into
a colonial, exchange-value economy. Plantation products
like sugar, tobacco, cotton and coffee were grown for
export. This economy could not function without the labor
of slaves. The Amerindians were mostly protected from the
rigors of slavery by the Jesuits, whose mission was to
convert them to Christianity. As was the case in most
colonies, the missionaries did the ground work for the
colonial administrators, by stabilizing the indigenous
people and teaching them European modes of thought. The flag
soon followed the cross. The Jesuits, however, were expelled
from Brazil in 1759. The Amerindians captured and enslaved
later during the bandeiras (raids) organized by the
Paulistas usually died due to inhuman conditions and
diseases contracted from Europeans. Their rapidly
diminishing numbers were replenished by a flourishing slave
trade continued across the Atlantic. The transatlantic
slave trade, between the 16th to the 19th centuries, brought
3,000,000 to 4,000,000 Africans to Brazil. These slaves

formed the foundation of the society. They suffered from an

56
enormously high mortality rate. Brazil was the last American
state to abolish slavery in 1888.
Martins visits the slave market in Rio as a prospective
buyer. The sight of the slaves, according to him, arouses
contradictory feelings in the Europeans:

Er bemerkt némlich einerseits mit Freude die
Spuren von Humanitét, welche sich allmalig in dem
Neger durch die Néhe der Weissen entwickeln,
andererseits muB er darfiber trauern, dass es eines
so gransamen und die Menschenrechte verletzenden
Institutes, wie der Sclavenhandel ist, bednrfte,
um jener erniedrigten, in ihrem Lande selbst
verwahrlosten Race die erste Schule ffir
Menschenbildnng zu geben. (118)

At the very moment the Africans are dehumanized, i.e. when
they are turned into slaves, Martins attributes them with
the first traces of humanity. It is slavery that first
makes human beings of them. Like children, who need to
attend school to become productive members of society, so
too do the slaves need the institution of slavery to uplift
them and make them useful. The blame for their dehumanized
condition is removed from the slave traders, because, as
Martins explains, the slaves had already degenerated to
their present condition in their natural setting.
"Verwahrlosen" implies "von der Natur, von der Vorsehung
stiefmfitterlich behandelt [sein]." 5 Martins suggests that
not even nature cared for these slaves in Africa, where they

would have had to pass their existence as wild savages.

57
little better than animals. In America, at least, they are
cared for by their European masters, who teach them to work,
and raise them from neglected creatures to profitable
members of society.

In an attempt to counteract the accusations of a
growing anti-slavery movement in Europe, Martins feels
compelled to justify the institution of slavery. He insists
that the condition of the slaves [Macuas] is not as pathetic
as it is claimed to be in Europe: "sie leiden nicht Mangel
an Nahrnng, sind, so weit es das Klima verlangt, bekleidet,
nnd durch Arbeiten selten fiberméssig angestrengt" (652).

The language used is modified to suit the argument. Earlier
the indigenous peOple were described contemptuously as
"half-naked". Now the half-naked slaves are "dressed as
much as the climate demands," in order to describe the
relative prosperity of the slaves. Martins also regards
slave songs and dances as proof of their contentment and
well being, confirming the image of the happy, healthy and
cheerful slave.

Admitting that the inhuman conditions of the journey to
America often kill hundreds of Africans, he explains that
this, however, is the price paid for civilization
("Veredlung") and that several slaves prefer this life to
the one they left behind. The word "Veredlnng" underscores
the need for improvement and refinement. The rhetoric of

religion is also used to justify slavery: "sie erkennen den

58

Werth moralischer Verbesserung, welche ihnen durch das Licht
des Christentums mdglich geworden ist ..." (653). Again the
discourse suggests ennoblement: a move away from darkness
towards light, from physical hardship to spiritual rewards
through the elevating influence of Christianity. Both
morality and religion served as arguments to prove the
superiority of the Europeans. Physiognomy was a third

factor in this complex.

4. The Physiognomy of the Other

The appearance of the indigenous populations is a topic
which every traveler writes about. Nothing makes a more
lasting impression than the visual, and this is evident in
the popularity enjoyed by physiognomy through the centuries
in Europe. In her essay, "The Face and the Soul," Patrizia
Magli demonstrates how physiognomy attributed a precise
meaning or a moral characteristic to every part of the body,
from the head down to the toes. These meanings were based
on arbitrarily assigned relations of equivalence, e.g.
hooked nose = greed, fleshy lips = sensuality etc., and were
established by convention. Thus a system of formal semantic
correspondences linking a person's facial traits and moral
inclinations guide our perceptions. The human form becomes
a symbol, waiting to be decoded. At the same time, the
arbitrary construction of the categories is concealed by the

implication of "naturalness" and consequently permanence.6

59

Physiognomy was applied to decode the character of
members belonging to marginal groups: women, lunatics,
criminals, Jews. The indigenous people of Brazil were also
subjected to the same treatment. Because Martins did not
know the language of the tribes he encountered, he had to
rely mostly on what he saw, i.e. on the visual appearance of
the people. As a result, long descriptions of the tribe's
physical characteristics dominate his accounts. For
example, the description of the Miranhas reads like a
virtual lesson on anatomy: Martins describes 26 body parts:
neck, pelvis, chest, shoulder blades, breasts, feet, toes,
hands, nails, navel, hair, head, the back of the head,
temples, forehead, face, cheek bone, nose, nostrils, eyes,
eye socket, eyebrows, mouth, upper and lower lips, teeth and
chin (1182). This is a common feature of scientific-
exploratory writing. The explorer and surgeon, Langsdorff,
for example, gives the exact measurements of Mnfau, an
inhabitant of the South Sea island of Nnkahiwa. Besides his
height, the length, breadth, periphery and circumference of
various body parts were recorded.7

This process whereby the body parts of the indigenous
people are textually dismembered from the whole and
scrutinized, results in the objectification of the people
described. They are not seen as cultural beings, but as
mere bodies and appendages. Trained in dissections as a

student of medicine, Martins subjects the Miranhas to a

60
descriptive dissection, taking them apart and examining each
section in isolation. Thus the Miranhas are reduced to mere
objects, pinned down and exposed to the scientific gaze of
the European eye. This objectification extracts them from
their social and historical environment. As Pratt observes,
they are not described as interlocutors, who provided the
travelers with valuable information, transportation and
labor, but as discrete entities of scientific enquiry

(Imperial Eyes 53). This is also evident in the

 

illustrations. Like the different species of trees (Fig.
l), the "specimens" from different tribes (Fig. 2) have also
been identified, classified and catalogued. These eight
faces are detached from their particular environment and
viewed in isolation as decultnrated beings. They are
represented only because of their different physical
appearance: elongated earlobes, tattoos, nails pierced
through the cartilage of the ear etc. These unique features
are now relocated from their original context and
assimilated into European paradigms.

Similarly, the artifacts (Fig. 3), such as bows and
arrows, pottery, items of adornment etc. are extracted from
their cultural context. As Pagden points out, these
decultnrated objects "served less to provide evidence of the
identity of alien cultures than they did to illustrate what
was believed to be a universal past, of which Europe had

once been part." 8

61

 

 

Figure l Pflanzenformen des tropischen Amerika, 1

 

Figure 2 Indianer

mTAl'I'IxiJ

62

xAuli

HUNDIUI‘I‘?

suns-urn

63

"V" ‘

y _.____,--'u.u (
"Ilnrwa~"" ‘

\
mm “Mum“

t

3.:
'01

gr!

 

Figure 3 Indianische Geratschaften

64
This European classificatory project imposed a
disciplinary order on the rest of the world. The world was
conceived as a chaos out of which scientists produced an

order (Pratt, Imperial Eyes 30). They located every species

 

on the planet, extracting it from its particular, arbitrary
surroundings (the chaos) and placed it in its appropriate
spot in the system (the order). Although this process may
seem benign at first, ideologically, it formed the basis of
European authority. The scientist was the expert and his
knowledge was privileged over local knowledge. From this
privileged position, he had the power to define the Other.
Classification also resulted in the reduction of the
visible. The established categories canalized the eye,
making the traveler see only those characteristics that the
category could accommodate. All new species were contained
within a precise and finite definition. Thus a new field of
vision was constituted, founded on European-based categories

of knowledge.

5. The Hierarchization of the Races

The description and classification of members belonging
to different ethnic groups eventually led to a
hierarchization of the races. While describing the Pnris,
Coropés, and Coroados, Martins constantly refers to the
"negro," (the terminology of the time) as a basis of

comparison:

65

die weiblichen Brfiste [sind] nicht so schlaff
herabhangend wie bei den Negerinnen; ... der Nabel
sehr wulstig, jedoch weniger als bei dem Neger;
die minnlichen Theile sind viel kleiner als die
der Neger, und nicht wie bei diesen in einem
bestandigen angor; ... . Das Antlitz ... springt
nicht so sehr hervor wie beim Neger, ... die Nase
ist ... nicht so breit gedrfickt wie bei dem Neger;
die Lippen bei weitem nicht so dick und wulstig
wie bei dem Neger. (376)

The physiognomy of the Other seems to be the placement
test, to see where on the evolutionary ladder a certain race
is going to be placed. Clearly the negro occupies the
lowest rung. He is on the borderline of humanity, lower
than any other race in the world. Martins attributes this
to the degree of difference in appearance between the negro
and all the other races. The category of difference thus
excludes him from the family of human beings, whose model of
perfection is the Caucasian race. The other races also have
different characteristics, but none as obvious and distinct
as the negro. The "Indian" is barely a few notches above
the negro, while the Chinese, who is compared not with the
negro, but with the "Indian" is placed still higher on the
evolutionary scale, by virtue of his appearance: "Sein
Gestalt [ist] schlanker, die Stirn breiter, die Lippen sind
dfinner ..., die zfige fiberhaupt feiner ... als jene des in

den Waldern aufgewachsenen Americaners" (184). Thus the

66
classification of human beings was explicitly comparative,
leading to the hierarchization of the races.

Classification of different races and of children of
mixed parentage becomes almost an obsession on the part of
the Europeans. Different names are designated to the
children depending on the "Abstufungen der Farbe" 9 or the
degree of European blood in them. Educated Germans could
thus talk in terms of Tercerons, Quarterons, and Quinterons.
These denominations illustrate the process of

hierarchization as a result of rigid classification. The

chart in W.B. Stevenson's Narrative of Twenty Years

 

Residence in South America (1825) depicting the mixture of

 

blood in children of mixed parentage takes into account even
the most minimal of fractions, such as the existence of 1/16

white blood in a Zambo (Pratt, Imperial Eyes 152).

 

Racial characteristics are not regarded as something
inherent and unalterable. They are linked with the different
stages of evolution and can begin to disappear by means of
civilizing factors, such as religion, education and mere
contact with the Europeans. The Macuanis, for example, are
Indians used by Brazilian settlers to fell trees and fight
against other tribes. In the words of Martins:

"sie waren wohl gebaut, ihre Gesichtzfige waren von dem
ersten Strahle der Bildung erheitert, und ihre Farbe nicht
sehr dunkelroth, sondern vielmehr, ahnlich der der Mongolen,

gelblichbraun" (492). These physiognomic traits are

67

attributed to the civilizing influence of the Europeans. It
is, however, evident, that only those Indians who cooperate
with the Europeans and willingly work for them are permitted
to "become fairer" and climb the evolutionary ladder.

Indigenous peOple, whose physical features resembled
the essentialized Caucasian, are regarded to be more
civilized than their darker counterparts. For example,
Martins is tempted to call the Passé "almost beautiful"
because of their "whiter complexion," "slimmer extremities,"
"longer neck," and "narrower hips." All these similarities
between the appearance of the Passé and the Caucasian lead
him to conclude: "Manches in der Kbrperbildung dieses Volks
auf eine hdhere Stufe desselben hindeutet" (1206). The men
however do not quite come up to Martius' expectations,
because of the absence of hair on their faces: "wahre
mannliche Schdnheit erheischt die Zierde des Bartes" (1204).
The recurring reference to beauty reveals that aesthetics
was an important criterion in science. A close resemblance
to the Caucasian model was evaluated as "beautiful" and
therefore more civilized, because this model was familiar.
The lack of a beard, the symbol of virility, was seen as a

10 At the same time

sign of inferiority and degeneration.
the Passé men are placed on the same level as women. This
feminization of indigenous men, which constrnes them as

weaker, is another form of control. It also illustrates the

68
hierarchies and power relations present within the Caucasian

race, i.e. within categories themselves.

6. Sexuality and the Other

Race intersects once again with gender in the discourse
of sexuality. This discourse explains the secondary status
of women and Blacks to European men by tracing its causes to
their nature. Women were determined by their sex or "das
Geschlecht," which was also a synonym for the concept
”Fran." She, however, could restrain her sexuality through
modesty and virtue. The Black, on the other hand, like the
prostitute was attributed with unrestrained and deviant
sexuality.

Unbridled sexuality was regarded as a sign of the swamp
or the earliest stage of human history. It was a
manifestation of the beast in man, his primeval nature,
which had to be repressed and mastered so that the higher
faculties of reason could rule. The Europeans were proof of
how far man had advanced in establishing control over the
world and himself. The Other, in the form of the Black,
represented the embodiment of European fears and repressed
desires. He symbolized the loss of control and the
regression into a dark past, ruled by the primitive
expression of emotions in the form of unrestrained sex.

The Black's sexuality is emphasized by Martins when he

describes the penis, using decidedly botanical terms, as if

69

s;;<&.m z_.<eytsa<: as:

 

Paulo

in S.

Figure 4 Die Baducca,

70
it were in a state of permanent erection. The Black's
enlarged penis was interpreted as a sign of uncontrolled
desire and deviant sexuality. Martins argues that while the
Africans may be “well endowed" with sexual prowess, as
indicated by the size of their sexual organ, it has been at
the cost of their intellect. The Europeans, on the other
hand, are not as well qualified as the Africans with respect
to sexuality, but they have been well compensated by way of
spiritual and intellectual abilities (259). This
compensatory theory establishes clearly which race has been
endowed with qualities required for ruling and which race
needs to be controlled.

Figure 4, ”Die Baducca, in S. Paulo" also underscores
the sexual aspect of the Other's character. The bare
breasts, uplifted arms and unrestrained manner of the
dancers is juxtaposed with the controlled figure of a
European soldier standing in the background with folded arms

and a disapproving demeanor.

7. The Homogenization of the Other

The physiognomy of the indigenous peOple is reduced to
one dominant feature - a "Grundtypus" (184) which subsumes
all individual traits. Nancy Stepan discusses this
typological orientation of scientists, according to which
every individual human being belonged in some way or other

to an undying essence or type.11 But whereas the

71

Caucasian type is differentiated into clearly recognizable
individual features, the Other lacks this individuality and
thus his humanity. All "Indians" look essentially alike,
according to Martins, due to the absence of culture and
civilization. The expressions on the faces of the "Indians"
do contain a human element, but it is still dormant, because
it has received no stimulus. Figure 5 depicts this lack of
individuality. The Puris look little different from the
Neanderthal man, relegated firmly to the Stone Age. They
are all standing in exactly the same posture, right leg
forward, arms drooping down, gazing emptily into space,
while the children clutch their parents from the back.
Similarly, Humboldt comments on the features of the Chaymas:
"I have observed ... that it is intellectual culture which
contributes most to diversify features. Barbarons nations
have rather a physiognomy of a tribe or a horde than one
peculiar to ... an individual." 12

Tattoos and other marks on the body (pierced noses and
earlobes) are described by Martins as "Vernnstaltungen," or
"eigenthfimliche Verstfimmelungen." Instead of locating these
variations within the context of Amerindian culture, they
are explained as "Abzeichen," a necessary custom for people,
who all look alike and do not possess any individual traits,
so that members of their tribes can recognize them more
easily (1279). Thus differences are made accountable by

subsuming culture into nature. Distinguishing marks like

72

 

Figure 5 Tanz der Puris

73
these are to be found more commonly in the animal kingdom,
according to Martins. Here we see a further element of the
discourse - the vocabulary used to describe the natives is
borrowed from the animal kingdom. As Frantz Fanon points
out:

He [the settler] speaks of the yellow man's
reptilian motions, of the stink of the native
quarter, of breeding swarms, of fonlness, of
spawn, of gesticnlations. When the settler seeks_
to describe the native fully in exact terms he
constantly refers to the bestiary ... those
hysterical masses, those faces bereft of all
humanity, ... that mob without beginning or end,

those children who seem to belong to

nobody....13

This language dehumanizes the Other, reducing him to a brute
and thus justifying the decimation of indigenous peoples and

the exploitation of their land.

8. Manichean Oppositions

Differences are regarded as pathological, or as
deformities, making the Other an aberration of the normal,
or the natural, which is constituted by the European. The
Other is judged not in its own specificity, as people
belonging to a different culture and social system, but is
defined in opposition to the European. The basis of any
writing about the Other as pointed out by JanMohammed is the

manichean allegory:

74

a field of diverse yet interchangeable oppositions
between white and black, good and evil,
superiority and inferiority, civilization and
savagery, intelligence and emotion, rationality

and sensuality, self and Other, subject and

object. 14

Martins constructs his "Indians" as negative examples,
in opposition to the values and ideals propagated by
bourgeois European culture. What emerges is a list of
virtues versus vices. This strategy is most apparent in the
discussion of women and family:

Das Band der Liebe schlaff, statt zartlichkeit
Brunst, statt Neigung Bedurfniss, die Mysterien
des Geschlechts entweiht und offen, ... das nackte
Weib Sclavin; statt der Schaam Eitelkeit; die Ehe
ein nach Laune wechselndes Concubinat; ...
Erziehung fiffische Spielerei der Mutter; ... statt
kindlichen Gehorsams Furcht; .... (1268).

Each segment of the paragraph quoted above constitutes an
opposition, listing bourgeois virtues on one side of the
field (zartlichkeit, Neigung, Weib, Schaam, Ehe, Erziehung,
Gehorsam) contrasted with savage vices on the other side
(Brunst, Bedfirfniss, Sclavin, Eitelkeit, Concnbinat,
Spielerei, Fnrcht). The woman is not regarded as an equal
partner joined together with the man in holy matrimony based
on mutual feelings of love and affection. Instead she is
degraded to the position of a slave, exploited in order to
satisfy the baser needs and urges of the man. The ideal of

the chaste and virtuous woman is held up against an immoral

75
and brutalized woman, incapable of fulfilling her duty as a
mother.

The Indian, Martins states, is devoid of all virtues,
guided by his instincts, and spends his life without
reflection. He is indolent, irrational, and indifferent to
everything (377-78). As Pratt points out this "manners and
customs" discourse homogenizes the indigenous people into
the collective misnomer "Indian," which is then contracted
even further to "be." "He" is always the subject of the
timeless present tense. Consequently his actions are not
seen as historical events, embedded in a specific encounter,

but as pregiven traits.15

The discourse deletes any
information about the actual interaction between the
traveler and the indigenous people. The homogenized subject
is reduced to a list of features and characteristics.

Not once are the Amerindians quoted or represented as
speaking for themselves in response to the Enropean's
questions. They are seen in terms of categories used by the
bourgeoisie to define themselves: marriage, obedience,
morals, discipline etc. As Pratt observes, while discussing
the Khoikhoi, "the Other is assimilated into European
paradigms. Differences that fall outside the paradigms are

inaccessible to the discourse or can be expressed only as

absences and lacks" (Imperial Eyes 44). The suffix ”-los,"

 

for example, occurs frequently in Martius' descriptions of

the indigenous people. They are "geffihllos," "gedankenlos,"

76
(378) "zfigellos," (294) “regellos,” (380) and "sittenlos"
(905). Martius' inability to master the complexity of
Amerindian languages is attributed to "[ein] Mangel an
Uebung des Geistes des Indianers" (384), just like his
inability to distinguish one member of a tribe from another
is explained by "[ein] Mangel an Ansbildung" (375).
Differences, for which language and experience provide no
adequate framework of interpretation, are thus erased and
conceived of as absences and lacks.

Other linguistic strategies consist of the use of
temporalizing words like "Urmensch," "Naturmensch" and
"Ureinwohner," which displace the indigenous people from the
world of the traveler, leaving the door open for European
intervention. Johannes Fabian points out that most
anthropological works have a tendency to place the Other in
a Time other than the present of the producer of the
discourse. This produces an "allochronic discourse" or a
"denial of coevalness," which deprives the Other of a voice
and prevents real communication between the anthropologist

and the Other.16

Similarly the Other can be assigned to a
different world, like Martins does, by comparing the
Amerindians' life to the irrational and imaginary world of
dreams: "Und ist nicht das ganze Leben dieser Menschen ein
dumpfer Traum, ans dem sie fast nie erwachen?" he asks
(495). As Ronald Inden notes, this technique assumes that

the world of the Other is a false copy of the real one.17

77
The Other is represented as a distorted version of the
normal or the natural, as constituted by the European. This
discourse is therefore not about people in the real world.
It is about the Other as a scientifically constituted object
of a discipline, and has little to do with the external

referent.

9. The Civilizing Mission

Martins concludes by calling the Amerindian "ein
beklagenswerthes Rathsel," not only for the European, who is
described as "the brother from the East," but even for the
Amerindian himself (1268). His essence is unfathomable.
The Other has to depend on the educated European to solve
his mysteries, unravel his history, interpret his culture,
and ultimately to rescue him from his own evil, for the
Other only recognizes "ein bases Princip" (379).

Martius' perceptions are not only limited by his own
conceptual framework, but also by his self-definition as a
member of a race, which is morally superior, practices the
true religion and is therefore in the position to "civilize"
the rest of the world, which is still in its infancy and has
to be taught to distinguish good from evil. Europe's
mission is to save souls: "die gefallenen Kinder America's
zur wahren Menschheit zn erheben ..." (692).

Martins, however, does not see a future for the

Amerindians in the family of humankind. These groups who

78
could not be enslaved like the Africans, and died in
increasing numbers were professed to be beyond civilizing.
The reasons are attributed to indifference, indolence and
stupidity on their part, for the advantages of civilization
are beyond the narrow limits of their comprehension. Seen
as a pathological case, the Amerindians are now deemed to
become extinct:

Sie [kdnnen] die h6here Entwicklung, die Europa
ihnen einimpfen will, nicht ertragen... [und]
scheinen [bestimmt], sich aufznldsen und aus der
Zahl der Lebendigen zu treten, bevor sie die
hdhere Stufe ... erreicht haben. (935)

The doctor-patient metaphor conceals the actual relationship
between Europe and its Other, shifting the cause of sickness
from the European on to the Amerindian himself, who despite
all the best efforts of the European doctor, seems intent on
dying. The Amerindians defy the belief in the perfection of
humankind, popular during the age of the Enlightenment, and
instead are regarded as "einen verkfimmerten Ast am Stamme
des menschlichen Geschlechtes" destined to disappear from

the face of the earth.

10. Colonial Fantasies

There is however a great future for Brazil: a Brazil
free of its indigenous peoples. In 1807, the Napoleonic
invasion of Portugal, forced the prince regent, Dom John

(King John VI) to transfer his seat of power to Brazil,

79
where he remained until 1821. During this period Brazil
opened its doors to foreign capital and enterprise. Not
surprisingly, Martins devotes several chapters to the mining
industry in Brazil, in particular diamonds and gold. Even
though Bavaria did not have any political ambitions in South
America, the economic potential this continent offered did
not escape the eye. Martins goes into a revery about the
boundless prospects this country has to offer, once it has
been developed:-

Wenn ... die Ufer des majestatischen Stromes mit
volkreichen Stadten besetzt sind, wenn die
westlichen Lander die Naturgrenze der Andes
bezwnngen haben, und Heerstrassen ..., das stille
Meer mit dem atlantischen Ocean verknfipfen, wenn
die jetzt einsam melancholischen Walder ... von
Rnfe der Schiffer wiederhallen! (1363)

Visions of improvement dominate. The discourse produces
habitats as "empty" landscapes, by textually depOpulating
the banks of the river and the "silent" forests. These
landscapes are meaningful only in terms of a capitalistic
future. They become a scene of enterprise, transformed by
capital and industry. The language of conquest
("bezwnngen," "Heerstrassen") in a genre that Pratt
purposely calls the "anti-conquest,"18 reveals fantasies
of domination and appropriation. Thus even though the goals
of the expedition may have been framed in terms of science
and enlightenment, the discourse in contrast nnderwrites

colonial appropriation.

80

As demonstrated in this chapter, scientists constructed
their object of enquiry through the procedures of
description, comparison and classification. The detailed
description of indigenous people resulted in lists of body
parts with no connection to their social environment.
Reduced to mere specimens, they could now be classified and
integrated into European paradigms of knowledge. As
discussed in the previous chapter, one such model was the
scale of being. Martins uses this paradigm to create order
amongst the different races in Brazil, by placing them in
their "appropriate" spot on the scale. Physiognomy and the
aesthetics of beauty are his criteria. Physiognomy also
reduces the Black, to sexual entity, who is defined in
opposition to the essentialized European. The analogy
between the Amerindians and animals denies the Other any
signs of individuality giving rise to a homogenous Other,
who is again contrasted with the multifaceted European.
Both habitats and inhabitants are constructed as neglected
and in need of improvement. While the African slaves could
actually be used to improve the land, and therefore were
believed to be improvable, the Amerindians were seen as
destined to die. This construction of the Other naturalizes
racial hierarchies and colonial relations, legitimizing

colonial intervention. As Reise in Brasilien illustrates,

 

the pursuit of knowledge for the advancement of humankind

81
underwrote colonial appropriation, even as it rejected
conquest and subjugation.

The discourse of improvement emerges again in the
letters of Ida Hahn-Hahn. However, it is not so much the
habitat which needs improving as the inhabitants. While
Martins clearly supports foreign enterprise in Brazil, Ida
Hahn-Hahn's opinions are more ambiguous. These ambiguities

will be discussed in the next chapter.

CHAPTER III

Letters From The Orient

Travelers to the Middle East availed themselves of a
collection of popular images, myths and vocabularies
circulating in society to talk about the Orient. Images

disseminated through Montesquieu's Persian Letters, operas,

 

such as Die Entffihrung aus dem Serail, and the widely read

 

Arabian Nights formed a grid through which travelers

 

invented the Orient: a place inhabited by despotic sultans,
slaves, erotic dancing girls and veiled women. As Said
demonstrates, the Orient was a constituted entity, encoded
in texts.1 It was also an exclusively male province. The
Orient was perceived as passive and feminine, a site that
promised sensual gratification, an escape from bourgeois
sexual repressiveness.

Ida Hahn-Hahn's letters from the Middle East have been

compiled under the title Orientalische Briefe.2 These

 

letters are personal letters to her mother, her brother,
Dinand, her sister, Clara and a close friend, Emy. But they
were intended for a wider audience and appeared in the
"Blatter ffir literarische Unterhaltnng" before being
published. These letters describe the cities, the country
side, the architecture, the peOple, their characteristics,

customs, history and government. They serve as an

82

83

illustration of tourist-leisure travel for the purpose of
self-enrichment. Unlike scientific discourse, which is
characterized by an impersonal and objective style, tourist
accounts were read as "personal impressions" of a country
and evaluated in terms of the degree of personality
displayed in them. Writers were encouraged and even
required to use the language of fantasy.

According to Annegret Pelz, travel accounts about the
Orient by women are:

die Begegnnng zweier Weiblichkeitsbilder, ... eine
exzentrische Bewegung von einer Peripherie in die
andere, die die Chance mit sich bringt, Selbst-
und Fremdbilder aufzubrechen nnd neu zn
schreiben.3

In this chapter I will analyze to what extent Pelz's
observation applies to Ida Hahn-Hahn's letters. Does gender
influence the construction of the Orient? To what extent
does Hahn-Hahn break old stereotypes and offer new models,

or does she adopt this essentially patriarchal discourse?

1. Ida Hahn-Hahn: Biographical Details

Born under the imposing name of Ida Marie Luise Sophie
Friederike Gustava Grafin Hahn in 1805, Ida Hahn-Hahn grew
up to become one of the leading female authors of popular
novels in the first half of the nineteenth century. She was
a member of an aristocratic family from Remplin in

Mecklenburg, where she grew up. Isolated from the

84
consequences of political events and from external
influences, Hahn-Hahn led a sheltered life. She did not
attend school and had a string of governesses, who were
charged with the responsibility of teaching her what a
person of her status and sex needed to know. This life of
ease did not last too long. Her father, who was a theater
buff, began his own theater company and started to stage his
own productions. This occupation was regarded as
inappropriate for a man of his status and eventually led to
his ruin. The family fell on hard times financially, and
the parents divorced each other. A marriage, however, was
arranged for Ida Hahn-Hahn. She was twenty-one years old
when she married her cousin Graf Friedrich von Hahn. Barely
three years had passed, before Friedrich Hahn sued for a
divorce on grounds of infidelity. Although he remarried
almost immediately, Ida Hahn-Hahn never did. A mentally-
retarded child was born soon after the divorce and she
received alimony to raise the child on her own. As so often
among women writers, the divorce proved to be a blessing in
disguise, since it left Hahn-Hahn free to pursue her own
interests and discover herself. After years of being
cloistered within the narrow confines of Mecklenburg, she
now had the world waiting before her. Not content with the
provincialism of Remplin and bored with the artificial
aristocratic lifestyle of her circle, she sought refuge in

travel.

85

At first her travels were restricted to the borders of
the German Confederation. She then extended her travels to
neighboring countries, like Switzerland, Austria and France.
The frontiers kept widening to encompass Italy, Denmark,
Spain, England, until finally, in 1843, she crossed
Constantinople - the door to the Near East. Ida Hahn-Hahn
was not the first European woman to set foot in
Constantinople. Her predecessors include the widely read
Lady Mary Montagu, Lady Craven, and Lady Hester Stanhope.
Lady Montagu accompanied her husband, who was posted there.
Ida Hahn-Hahn, on the other hand, endured the hardships and
the dangers of her journey voluntarily. She was accompanied
by Baron Adolf Bystram. After visiting Beirut, Damascus,
Jerusalem, and Cairo, she travelled down the Nile to
Abyssinia, returning to Europe in 1846. In 1854 she founded
a convent of the Sisters of the Good Shepherd in Mainz.
This convent looked after unmarried mothers and women in
difficulty. She lived there for more than 25 years until

she died in 1880.

2. Women Travelers and their Writings

Despite the immense popularity of her novels during her
lifetime, Ida Hahn-Hahn sank into oblivion after her death
and was only revived by feminist criticism in recent years.
Women's writings have traditionally suffered at the hands of

I I 4 I I I I
critics. Even more so their travel writings. Conspicuous

86
by their absence in the public sphere, middle and upper
class women were presented as fragile creatures, in need of
protection and dependent on their husbands and fathers for
their status and identity. Travel was not compatible with
the role assigned to women. It was only accepted as
legitimate if they accompanied their husband on duty, as in
the case of Lady Montagu. Otherwise women had to be content
with the role of armchair travelers, broadening their
horizons through other people's accounts, while carrying out
their duties at home.

Given the dominant literary image of contemporary women
as the angel in the house, it is surprising how many women
actually challenged that role by not only stepping out of
the confines of the home and travelling, sometimes without a
chaperone, but also by writing about their journey.
According to Sara Mills this subversive element inherent in
their writings is counterbalanced by the inclusion of
several other elements, which foreground the author's
femininity. This discourse of femininity differentiates
women's writing from men's. For example, women writers
frequently emphasize the importance of correct behavior and
appropriate dress. Women were expected to write about
topics in keeping with their feminine characteristics, such
as morals, dress, domestic affairs, spirituality, hygiene
and personal relationships, while the "serious" topics,

concerning politics, the military and the economy were

87
reserved for men. If women did write about topics usually
found in masculine discourse, they frequently denigrated it
as not worthy of being included. Similarly, women could not
employ the hardy adventure hero as the narrator figure,
required by the conventions of travel literature.
Consequently their accounts were judged as bland and boring.
On the other hand, if they rejected these discursive
pressures and wrote about their adventures, their accounts
were seen as fictitious, since the characters went against
the stereotypical notions of woman.5 However, as my
analysis demonstrates, Hahn-Hahn was influenced little by
these discursive constraints. Her letters are stamped by
the authoritative stance of colonial discourse.

While traditional research regards women travelers as
anomalous and eccentric, more recent research hails them as
protofeminists, women who challenged social conventions and
escaped the confines of patriarchy in search of alternative
lifestyles. Most critics do not read women travelers within
the colonial context, because such a reading might undermine
the feminist focus of their study. Feminist studies strove
to reclaim forgotten women travelers in an otherwise male-
dominated genre and to create a canon of role models and
heroines. Renate Mdhrmann, for example, emphasizes the
hardships and dangers Hahn-Hahn endured in her quest for
knowledge.6 Elke Frederiksen interprets Hahn-Hahn's

Orientalische Briefe as a quest for the lost traces of

88
women's history and thus indirectly the exploration of her
own identity.7

While these attempts are necessary, they ignore the
differences in power relations between Western women
travelers and the members of the countries in which they
traveled, resulting in a partial reading. Women travelers'
accounts of non-European countries are interesting because
these women are simultaneously part of the colonial mind set
and yet marginalised within it.8 According to Sara Mills,
this ambiguous position makes their writings more
contradictory in nature and not as straightforward as men's.
Statements voicing colonial sentiments appear together with
statements which undermine them (62).

Hahn-Hahn's letters also contain several ambiguities,
beginning with her reason for visiting the Orient. Her
journey is motivated by an overriding desire for inner
enrichment and self-exploration. In a letter to her mother
she explains how she is driven by a "Drang zur Erkenntnis."
She wants to live her life to the maximum, like the phoenix
that rises from the flames rejuvenated, for as she asks:
"Was ist den leben (sic) anderes, als seine Krafte
gebrauchen und mit dem Leibe die Seele nahren? .... Ein
Dasein, das nicht in dem Gebrauch seiner Krafte fiben nnd
verzehren kann, darf man nicht mehr ein Leben nennen" (17-
18). However, this urge to expand the boundaries of her

identity to the limit is later concealed under the guise of

89
another more conventional motive for travelling to the
Orient: to learn the "lessons from times past for times
present."9 Contrasting past and present had become a
common literary device in travel accounts about the Orient.
Hahn-Hahn finds refuge behind this convention, deflecting
personal motives on to more "noble“ ones: "Hofnungen will
ich, nur Hofnungen! .... nicht fur mich, nicht fur Andere,

aber ffir uns Alle" (l: 281).10

3. In Pursuit of the Past
Ida Hahn-Hahn states the purpose of her voyage in clear
terms:

... um die Statten kennen zu lernen, anf denen
einst groBe Civilisationen gleich Blfiten aus dem
Kern ihrer Religionen hervor- und untergingen, als
der Samenstaub jener Blfiten tanb ward. ... um die
Statte zu sehen, wo unsre Civilisation, die
vielseitigste von Allen die je gewesen, ihren
Ursprnng hat. (1: 280)

Thus, from the very outset Hahn-Hahn perceives the Orient as
a remnant of the past, the birthplace of civilizations,
which had reached their prime and then decayed, or become
impotent (or infertile, as the word "Samenstaub" indicates),
after giving birth to the Occident. The relationship
between the Orient and the Occident is already clearly
defined as the relationship between the past and the
present. This is reiterated in the following statement: "von

dem Welttheil, der ist, will ich zu dem hin, der war; aus

90
der enropaischen Gegenwart in die orientalische
Vergangenheit” (l: 281). What the traveler should expect to
see therefore is a lost civilization, mysterious ruins,
indicators of a once glorious past.

This image of the Orient was widely prevalent in Europe
and served polemic ends. The Orient became the site where
Europe could search for its origins: the pure and the
pristine, as it was before it became corrupt. A journey to
the East was a quest for the original, infant state of the
human race, the lost paradise of all religions and
philosophies, a return to Europe's own forgotten
origins.11 It can be understood as an attempt to get down
to the basic principles, to what was innate and natural as
opposed to what was artificial.

Hahn-Hahn's observations of the Orient are canalized by
the dominant myths about the Orient. She is going to the
Orient to see what she wants and expects to see:

"... Traurigkeiten, Wfisten, Ruinen, Desolationen ...
majestfitische, trostreiche, segenvolle Erinnerungen"

(l: 281). The very purpose of Hahn-Hahn's journey is bound
to the vision of the Orient as the past: to read the future
from the ruins of the past and see a sign of hope for
Europe. Europe, whose very foundations had become unstable,
was now in the grips of social, economic and political
change: "In Europa sieht es so hofnungslos ans, so unruhig.

Keinem ist wol auf seinem Platz ... Alles was besteht soll

91
nmgeandert, oder nmgebildet, wenn nicht gar umgestoBen
werden" (l: 281). She foresees an impending catastrophe
awaiting Europe:

Denn Trfimmer wird es geben gr68er als die von
Balbek und Theben zusammen genommen! schon jetzt
kommen sie zum Vorschein, man halt sie nur noch
mit eisernen Klammern zusammen, und es hat auch
Niemand den Muth zu sagen: SehtI es sind

Trfimmer. - Aber wen von uns hat sich nicht selbst
hundert Mal bei Betrachtnngen des Zustandes von
Religion, Gesellschaft und Staat gefragt: Wie
lange wird es noch halten? (1: 282)

Germany was indeed in a state of flux. In contrast to
the bourgeoisie in France, which had wrested political power
from the monarchy and safeguarded its economic interests,
the German bourgeoisie was still fighting for political and
economic power. In order to quell these demands, economic
reforms were being implemented, as in the case of Prussia,
but at the cost of political emancipation. The Zollverein
(1834) served to increase the economic power of the
bourgeoisie by stimulating trade, commerce and industrial
production. At the same time the abolishment of guilds
forced the petty bourgeoisie into the ranks of the newly
emerging proletariat. More radical movements, which
refused to compromise were crushed by the introduction of
repressive measures, like censorship.

The Romantic agenda with its call for a spiritual

return to the past, for transformation and rejuvenation, for

92
a Europe regenerated by Asia, was in a sense a mystification
of the problems facing Germany. Something was missing from
the European present: the sense of unity and wholeness.
There was a hope that a return to Oriental sources
(especially Indian) would bring about a change for the
better. There was also a need to seek out the roots of
Christianity, which had come to be threatened by materialism
and scientific discoveries. The Orient became a destination
for travelers seeking Biblical illustrations which would
reconfirm their faith.

Hahn-Hahn's journey is also a pilgrimage, though not a
religious one: She wants to restore her faith in the
future. The sight of the ruins gives her confidence that
Europe too will see a new beginning (1: 282). By the end of
her journey however, this confidence has been eroded and
replaced by fear. The contrast between the two worlds, the
world of the majestic past, embodied by the silent ruins and
the world of the dilapidated present, inhabited by "dies
Ameisengeschlecht" swarming over the dust of its ancestors,
leads her to wonder: "Was wird ans uns werden, aus unsrer
kfinstlichen, komplizirten, superfeinen, gebrechlichen Welt!"
(3: 209). Can the same fate be in store for Europe? Europe
has passed its zenith and resembles "ein fader,
abgebranchter Mummenschanz." Back on the shores of Europe,
Hahn-Hahn finds herself in the "twilight" of the

present.12

93
Hahn-Hahn emphasizes the fact that this is no ordinary
journey, which normally implies a spatial displacement. A
journey to the Orient is a temporal displacement, because it
is a journey into the past:

Wie viel hundert Meilen im Raum ich ...
durchwandert sein mOge, ist ... von geringer
Bedeutnng, daB ich in der Zeit wirklich durch
Jahrtausende gepilgert bin; und nicht in Bfichern
... oder in Gedanken: nein, in der Wirklichkeit,
auf dem uralten Boden, zwischen den nrsprunglichen
Monumenten. (3: 260)

The contemporary obsession with origins is expressed by the
adjectives "ursprfinglich" and "uralt." Moldering monuments,
inanimate relics from the distant past substitute living
people of the present. As Pratt observes,

the European imagination produces archeological
subjects by splitting contemporary non-European
peoples off from their pre-colonial ... pasts. To
revive indigenous history and culture as

archeology is to revive them as dead. The gesture

... reassigns them to a departed age.13

The project of archeology thus appropriates the past, by
rediscovering ruins and reconstructing a lost history. It
denies the contemporary descendants of these societies a
historical consciousness and self-knowledge. They are not
seen as historical agents who have living continuities with
the past and historically based claims on the present.
Instead, they are silenced and disempowered, available to be

subjugated and controlled.

94

4. The Eternal and Unchanging Orient

This theme which depicted the Orient as Europe's past
contradicts another frequently used representation of the
Orient as timeless and eternal. According to the logic of
the first argument the Orient had once been a great
civilization and had then declined. The second argument, on
the other hand, dehistorizes the Orient, by transforming it
into a static, motionless and unchanging tableau. A
favorite setting for Oriental tableaus are scenes from the
Bible. For example, in a letter to her sister from
Jerusalem, Hahn-Hahn describes the Orient as if it were a
page from the Old Testament:

die Kameele die dranBen vor der Stadt am Brunnen
lagern, die Weiber ... mit dem Krng auf der
Achsel, ... die silbernen Armringe, welche sie
tragen, dazu die Geréthschaften von primitiver
Einfachheit, die Form der ... Lampen, der
keulenartige Hirtenstab, die Schleuder womit die
Kinder spielen und womit David den Goliath
erschlug, die Cisternen im Felde worin die Brfider
den Joseph versenken wollten .... (2: 217)

The Orient is perceived as a stage with biblical actors
presenting an idyllic scene for their European audience.
Hahn-Hahn finds that the past lives in the present in
Jerusalem:

Das Leben der alten Patriarchen wie es in der
Bibel beschrieben wird, kann man sich in diesem
Lande aufs Lebhafteste vergegenwfirtigen. Die
Zustfinde sind noch so einfach, die Existenz hat so

95

geringe Bedfirfnisse, der unentwickelte Mensch
wandelt so genau anf demselben Weg nnd bis zu
demselben Punkt wohin sein Vater gewandelt ist,
daB der Umschwnng der Zeit wenig EinfluB auf ihn
hat. (2: 215)

It is as if the Orient has been frozen in time: "Zwei
Jahrtausende findern hier nichts. Es ist, wie es war!
Dieselben Sitten, dieselben Gebrauche, dieselben Ideen" (2:
310). The Orient is not subject to the ordinary processes
of history. It is timeless. This sense of time separates
the Orient from the Occident.

If the Orient was constructed primarily as timeless,
then it is also lifeless. The relationship between the
Orient and Europe is characterised by the contrasting
factors of inaction and motion. The Orient is static,
petrified in the past, whereas the Occident is dynamic,
governed by the laws of motion. There is no evidence of any
progress in the Orient. Progress seems to be the
prerogative of the West: "die abendlandische Menschheit...
[huldigt] ... dem Prinzip der Bewegung ..., Der Morgenlander
bleibt mehr dem stabilen Prinzip getreu" (2: 216). Hahn-
Hahn personifies the two in an argument about who is
superior, the Orient or the Occident:

Orient: Du warest todt ohne mich! das Prinzip
alles Lebens: das Licht - der Keim jeder
Gesittung: die Religionen gehen mir ans, wie der
Sonnenstrahl. Occident: Ich aber habe das Prinzip
verarbeitet, den Keim zur Blfite gebracht. Du bist

96

todt wie die Blume, welche dahinwelkt nachdem sie
ihren Samen gestreut hat. Ich lebe, denn in mir
ist Bewegung. (1: 126)

The argument is flawed by an inherent contradiction. Even
though the Orient is described as "das Licht" and therefore
the life-giving source, Hahn-Hahn contradicts herself by
stating that the Occident brought this source to life, it
awakened the dormant seed. However, this life-giving power
which she attributes to the Occident requires sunlight,
without which nothing can bloom. Logically speaking, there
can be no "Bewegung" (embodied in the Occident) without the
"Prinzip" (the Orient).

Even though the origins of Europe are located in the
East, here it is Europe that articulates the Orient. Europe
is depicted as the creator, whose life-giving power
represents, animates, and constitutes the Orient. The
subtext also suggests that Europe is the active male and the
Orient is the passive female. The sexual innuendo is
implicit in the the imagery of a seed being fertilized or
inseminated: "den Keim zur Blfite gebracht." This exchange
reflects another contradiction in the philosophy of the age:
On the one hand, Europe searched for its origins in the
East, but at the same time it saw itself as the resurrector
of the East. As Said observes, Orientalists found it their
duty to rescue some portion of a lost classical Oriental
grandeur in order to assist the modern Orient, and thereby

lift it from obscurity (121). Europe unravels the mysteries

97
of the Orient (eg. hieroglyphics, Rosetta Stone). Martins
also calls the Amerindians "ein beklagenwerthes Rathsel,"
who have to be rescued from their own destiny (1268).

This exchange between the Orient and the Occident
clearly indicates that for Hahn-Hahn "Bewegung" constitutes
the basic difference between the two. "Bewegung" - motion,
development, change, progress - is the essence of life.
Without it the Orient is impotent (like a flower that has
scattered its seeds) and therefore powerless. The Orient is
represented as both impotent male and fertile female. Each
of these constructions can be subjugated and controlled by
the Occident. Hahn-Hahn denies the Orient this vital
essence of life:

Wohin man im Orient sich wende, fiberall trift man
auf ein uns ganz unbegreifliches Bestehen des
Uraltesten. Wer sich nicht mit der fiberzeugung
durchdringen kann, daB Unwandelbarkeit der
Character des Orients ist, wer Bewegung,
Fortschritte, Unruhe, drangendes Treiben nach
etwas Anderem, Besserem, bei ihm voraussetzt -
versteht ihn nicht ... (3: 254)

The characteristics of the Occident: "Bewegung,"
"Fortschritte," "Unruhe" and "Treiben nach etwas Anderem"
are contrasted and held up against those of the Orient:

"Unwandelbarkeit" and "Bestehen des Urfiltesten."

 

98

5. The Ailing Orient

Along with the static imagery of a timeless Orient,
there is a recurring reference to themes of decay and
degeneration. The contrasting factors of active and passive
are not restricted to only the physical plane, but extended
to incorporate the intellect too. Whereas Europeans are
physically and intellectually active, the Orientals lead a
life of ease, sitting around and smoking their pipes all
day, undisturbed by wants or mental exertion. Instead of
taking pleasure in active sports like hunting, they spend
their time in coffee houses smoking and reminding Hahn-Hahn
of a "Wachsfigurenkabinet."

Dies dumpfe Hinbruten fiber nichts, die regungslose
Versenkung in nichts, diese dick umwélkte
Existenz, durch keinen Blitz des Gedankens, durch
keine Sterne der Intelligenz gelichtet, ist denn
doch am Ende so ungenfigend, so befriedigungslos,
daB die Seele in einen Zustand krankhafter
Abspannung gerfith, ... . (1: 182)

This extract is built around the opposition between light
and darkness. The word "Orient" denotes radiance, lustre,
the rising sun. Yet, the Oriental is sunk in darkness as
the words "dumpf," and "dick umwdlkt" suggest, and hence
denied light (Blitz, Stern, gelichtet), which is the symbol
of enlightened rationality.

This idle vocation of the Turks is regarded as a
pathological state. Although they may want to cure

themselves from this disease, they, unlike the Europeans,

99
possess neither intellect nor the enterprise. Hahn-Hahn
accepts the postulate of the Enlightenment, that all human
beings are endowed with the same faculties of rationality,
but at the same time denies the Turks the development of
these faculties due to their inherent mental and physical
laziness. The concessionary nature of this argument (equal
but not equal) is revealed by the series of antitheses built
into the following passage:

Der Durst der Seele mag wol fiberall derselbe sein;
aber womit sie ihn zu stillen versucht, ob mit
klaren reinen - oder schlammigen und trfiben
Wassern: das macht den Unterschied. Um zu den
reinen Quellen zu gelangen, muB man auf Hdhen
klimmen: die trfiben liegen nfiher und machen es
bequemer. Da trinkt man sich denn in den schweren
Taumel hinein, der den Geist fesselt und die Sinne
entfesselt, und der durch die Gefangenschaft der
einen Richtung des menschlichen Wesens, der andern
eine wonnige Freiheit, auf Kosten Jener,
verschafft. Wer so wenig vom Geist weiB wie der
Tfirk, so wenig Thatkraft hat, so wenig die
Beschaftigung liebt, von der Leidenschaft nichts
kennt als ihre brutale Seite, namlich nie eine
Sehnsucht und immer nur ein Verlangen; wer ...
Verweichlichung und Genfisse aller Art kennt ...
muB dem Opium verfallen. (1: 182-83)

The particles "mag" and "wohl," the adjectives, "klar" and
"trfib," the verbs "klimmen" and "verfallen" and the nouns,
"Geist" and "Sinne," "Gefangenschaft" and "Freiheit" are all

set against each other. These oppositions are only another

100
way of representing the Oriental as Other. Rationality is
undermined by Eastern excesses, reflected in the Dionysian
images of Turks drowning in drink, sex and opium. The
discourse produces the Turks as figures enslaved by their
decadence, driven to living in a state of unconscious
delirium. The argument itself is tautological: their crime
is being Turks. Since the Turks were at a disadvantage from
the outset, because they are denied the will to strive for
nobler goals, the resolution of the argument in addiction is
hardly surprising. She concludes that this lethargic
existence has ultimately contributed to the degeneration of
"the Oriental mind."

The motive of decay and degeneration occurs frequently
with that of outward grandeur. What appears to be, is in
reality not so and turns out instead to be a mere facade, an
illusion. The diamond-encrusted Sultan of ConstantinOple,
Abdul-Medjid, for example, strikes Hahn-Hahn as "starr und
glasig." The very word "Sultan" is the embodiment of power,
authority and pomp. Instead, according to hearsay, he
suffers from epilepsy, and neurosis (l: 134). Sickness and
disease is covered with the opulence of jewels.

The contrast between splendour and decay is taken up
once again in the legend of King Salomo. Hahn-Hahn uses
this metaphor to depict the gradual process of a nation in
decay. Despite the outward brilliance she can feel the rot

setting in and putrefying slowly, unobserved:

101

Er war todt, der weise Kdnig; auf seinem Thron
sitzend war er gestorben, und da saB er noch,
majestatisch, unbeweglich, und alle gehorchten
ihm, wie bei seinem Leben, ... Endlich kam den
Diws seine Unbeweglichkeit doch bedenklich vor;
allein ans Ehrfurcht wagte sich keiner in seine
Nahe. ... da stifteten sie den Holzwurm an, er
solle den Stab zernagen. Vierzig Tage nagte der
Holzwurm an dem Stabe: da brach er zusammen, und
fiber ihn stfirzte die Leiche hin und machte es kund
daB Kdnig Salomo léngst todt war. (1: 171-72)

King Salomo, who commands respect because of his royal
and imperious appearance, is the Turkish nation, majestic on
the outside but rotten at the core. From a distance it may
seem imposing to the eye of an innocent traveler, but Hahn-
Hahn assures her sister this is an illusion: "es ist schon
todt." Salomo's motionless, stationary posture, like the
ossified Turkish nation is a symbol of his impotence and
death.

On her way back to the guest house, she observes the
people on the streets busy with their daily activities:
"Alles ging nach hergebrachter Weise im kindischen Treiben,
ohne Intelligenz, ohne Idee, so fort. Ich allein dachte
daran, daB Kénig Salomo gestorben sei." Hahn-Hahn sets
herself above the rabble, as the only person conscious of
the truth, because she is the enlightened, mature European
observer. The Turks, on the other hand, are described as
too preoccupied with their childish antics. Like little

children engrossed in their games, they do not have the

102
foresight or intelligence to make plans for the future,
unaware of the impending catastrophe. As discussed in
chapter one, this analogy which compares the stages of
evolution with the ages of man belonged to the discourse of
the Other. To illustrate her point, Hahn-Hahn chooses her
objects carefully. Amongst all the bustling activity on the
streets, she mentions an Armenian girl on a swing, a juggler
performing his tricks and a vendor selling sweets. All

three activities emphasize the immaturity of the Other.

6. Unveiling The Orient: Representation and Reality

The motives of decay and grandeur go hand in hand with
those of illusion and reality. The experiences of the
traveler are determined by what she has read
(representations). Reality, therefore, is conceived of as
representation. The idyllic scenes from the Bible, which
Hahn-Hahn paints, illustrate this point. However, when
reality does not meet the expectations of the traveler, and
the Orient turns out to be not at all like the texts, a
feeling of disappointment ensues. It is criticized as an
illusion, a betrayed dream or unauthentic. A
demystification of images culled from texts follows. Hahn-
Hahn unveils the Orient, exposing the dismal reality behind
the facade of grandeur and debunking existing myths that

construct the Orient as a site of haunting landscapes,

103
romance and intoxicating experiences. Reality is contrasted
with representation.

Describing the city of Constantinople to her mother,
Hahn-Hahn explains how from a height, the city appears to be
like a garden, or a summer palace. She then draws a
parallel with theater sets in order to emphasize the fact
that this is only the appearance, a scaffold, and not the
reality:

Stelle dir eine Theaterdekoration vor, von
Kfinstlerhand mit dem grdBten Geschmack gemalt: Du
bist entzfickt, hingerissen ..., immer von neuem
schauest Du sie an, kannst nicht satt werden zu
bewundern; und jetzt ffihrt man Dich hinter die
Szene. Hilf Himmel! Latten, Sparrwerk,
schmutziges Papier, Stricke, Olflecke, ...: - so,
aber genau ist Konstantinopel. (28)

The whole illusion she patiently builds up falls apart into
dirt and disorder, resulting in an anticlimax. This is a
deliberate orchestration of the reader's response, whereby
Hahn-Hahn sets herself up as the authority, who dispels

14 This authoritative

illusions and unveils the reality.
stance is also revealed in statements such as, "Mir war als
k6nnte ich bis ins Herz von Afrika hineinsehen" (3: 184).
Africa yields its inner most secrets and laid itself bare to
the eyes of the traveler.

Both Constantinople and the town of Luxor make a

greater impact on Hahn-Hahn from a distance than from close

by. Constantinople at dawn wraithed in mist is "ein

104
wahrhaft entzfickendes Bild ... ganz wie man es in
Feenmarchen liest". But as the sun rises, revealing the
whole city, the magic is dispelled. The enchantment lies at
a distance. As soon as the visitor enters the city, the
illusion of a "Feenstadt" vanishes and is replaced by the
neglect and confusion of a "Schmutzstadt" (96).
From afar, Luxor acquires:

den mythologischen Charakter eines Gemaldes von
Claude Lorrain: ... in solchen traumerischen Duft,
in so idealische Farbungen ist es gehfillt; ... In
der Nahe verschwindet Luxors Zauber durch die
ekelhafteste aller ekelhaften Wirklichkeiten.
(313)

As Timothy Mitchell points out, there are two
interconnecting factors at play here: Firstly, the
perspective of the observer and secondly, the world as
representation.15 Hahn-Hahn clearly prefers the
perspective from a distance. Looking from atop or from
afar, with the rest of the city laid out in front or beneath
the viewer, allows the person to enframe the view and
represent it for the reader. The city presents itself to
the invisible European eye, which “commands" the view that
falls within its gaze. The observer occupies the central
position (the point of view) which is set apart and outside
the world, from where she can see and yet not be seen. This

optical detachment enables the viewer to separate herself

from the world and thus constitute it as a panorama.

105

On the other hand, when the observer does not occupy
this privileged position, but finds herself in the midst of
the town, for example, the perspective vanishes. She is
confronted with the dis-orienting Orient, and surrounded by
a chaos of details, a visual turmoil, which the eye cannot
arrange and order. It is impossible to grasp the whole, for
the whole refuses to compose itself into a picture. The
absence of pictorial order leads to the frustrating and
disorienting experience felt by the viewer: " - ich
versichere Sie man wird ganz betaubt, ganz verwirrt, ganz
erschdpft von der Anstrengung in dies Chaos Ordnung zu
bringen" (311). This duality between chaos and order is
reminiscent of the naturalist's task, discussed in the
previous chapter. Martins also sees himself as creating
order amidst the chaos of nature through the painstaking
process of careful description, comparison and
classification.

The reality the viewer constructs is that which could
be represented according to European pictorial and
organizational conventions. It must present itself as a
picture before the observer, as an object that stands apart
and separate from the reality of the observer. The world is
perceived as a pictorial representation. The distinction
between the two (text and world) becomes blurred. Luxor

becomes a painting by Claude Lorraine. Similarly, Cairo

106

becomes the authentic oriental city because its architecture

comes straight out of the Arabian Nights (243).

What

framework

 

defied the narrow confines of the pictorial

and thus could not be represented, dissolved into

chaos. Hahn-Hahn tries to paint a picture of the cataracts

of Assuan.

Chaos and

degree of

She describes the waters:

ein breites, form-, ufer- und regelloses Wasser,
das sich wild und rasch ... herumdrangt und
tummelt ... . Es herrscht die graue Einfdrmigkeit
des Chaos und seine dfistre Confusion. ... fiber
diese Natur hat der Mensch keine Gewalt. Diese
Wasser kann er nicht lenken und ordnen ... nicht
beherrschen. Es ist die traurigste,
unfiberwindlichste Eindde, ... von furchtbarer
Starrheit, und doch ohne die wilde, kalte
Erhabenheit einer Oede im Hochgebirg. Sie ist zu
formlos, zu chaotisch um erhaben zu sein. Den
ersten Schritt aus dem Chaos heraus thut gleichsam
das Hochgebirg, und ist erhaben, weil es etwas
Ungeheures fiberwunden hat. Hier aber ist noch
nichts fiberwunden, sondern Alles in unstillbarer
Gahrung, und weil der Rahmen des Bildes so groB,
weit und umfassend, und das Bild selbst doch nicht
majestatisch ist, so ffihlte ich mich beklemmt und
gedrfickt, und starrte ganz trube da oben von der
Felsenklippe in diese graue Wildnis hinein. (3:
186)

order collide once again in the Orient. A high

uncontrolled and undirected action and speed is

packed into the passage (wild, rasch, herumdrangt, tummelt)

emphasizing the chaos. However these energized adjectives

107
and verbs anti-climax in "die graue Einfdrmigkeit," "dustre
Confusion" and "Starrheit," creating a devouring abyss or a
void. The sentence structure, where the agent follows the
verb underwrites the impotence of man to control the
unleashed forces of nature. The language of control
(herrscht, Gewalt, lenken, ordnen, beherrschen) occurs side
by side with that of disorder (formlos, regellos,
unfiberwindlich, unstillbar, Wildnis). Again reality (the
cataracts) can only be conceived as a representation (Bild),
but despite her elevated position on the cliff, Hahn-Hahn is
unable to impose order or conquer the view. Her gaze is
unable to assign it center, measure, direction or limit and
loses itself in the void. The end effect is the
accumulation of separate images lacking the harmony and
effect of a picture.

Hahn-Hahn is influenced by classic aesthetic
conventions, which promoted the ideals of harmony and
simplicity. The function of art was to sublimate nature or
matter. It was accompanied by a moral imperative, which
emphasized the triumph of the sublime over adversity through
the exercise of self-discipline and restraint. Unlike the
alpine mountains which do triumph over chaos and can be
called lofty or sublime as a result, the cataracts embody
the unleashing of occult forces, which defy the classic
aesthetic conventions, disorient her senses and are deemed

unmajestic.16

108

7. A Prescription For The Orient

The invisible gaze which places the observer in a
position of authority is a common feature in colonial
discourse. This authoritative stance is reiterated in the
medical metaphor which represents the relationship between
Europe and the Orient as that between a doctor and a
patient. For example, Hahn-Hahn describes the Ottoman
empire as an enervated organism, dying slowly of
consumption, while European powers try to rewive it using
European education, industry and infrastructure. Hahn-Hahn
sees these efforts as futile:

Die fremde Disciplin, die fremde Wissenschaft
gehen diesem Kfirper nicht organisch ins Blut, in
den Lebenskeim fiber. Um abgestorbene Vfilker zu
regeneriren, ist die Einimpfung einer fremden
Bildung nicht wirksam genug. (l: 167)

The patient is already deemed dead. Nothing can help any
more. Martins, also used the language of medicine to
represent the futility of trying to save the Amerindians
from their own obstinacy: the Amerindians resisted all
treatment administered by Europe and seemed intent on dying.
Hahn-Hahn, likewise, has already determined the fate of the
Turks: "In dieser tfirkischen Herrschaft ist, ... mehr ein
zerstfirendes als ein erhaltendes Prinzip ... . Ihr Scepter
ist wie der Stab einer bosen Fee: auch ohne bfise Absicht

thut er Schaden wohin er fallt" (1: 323). This destructive

109
tendency is seen as something innate, therefore natural and
unavoidable.

But not all Orientals are eliminated. Like Martins,
Hahn-Hahn also builds hierarchies within the category of the
Other. The Egyptians are not as dissipated as the Turks.
But unlike her male counterparts, Hahn and Martins, Hahn-
Hahn does not recommend colonial intervention as a means of
promoting progress. In fact she criticizes the ruler of
Egypt, Mehmet Ali for aping the West, instead of recognizing
the indigenous potential of the country. The living
standards of the people have to be raised and this can be
achieved without European industry (352:III). She mocks the
French teachers who have been hired by Ali, so that his sons
can benefit from a European education. French grammar and
syntax are hardly what Egypt needs for progress (363:III).
Rather, the answers have to be found in the Orient.

However this gesture, which contests colonial
discourse, is then undone by a strong criticism directed
against the Turks for their inability to become what
Europeans are. The language of the civilizing mission is
used to invent the Orient as backward and neglected. The
discourse of improvement creeps in. The Valley of Bekaa,
with one of the most fertile soils in the world becomes a
symbol of waste and neglect, because it is not being
exploited. Hahn-Hahn suggests: "Man kfinnte ... die Bekaa in

den fippigsten Garten verwandeln. Allein das Volk ist so

110
maBig, daB seine Bedfirfnisse durch geringere Mfihe reichlich
befriedigt werden." This motive of transforming deserts
into gardens appears again in the diaries of a missionary,
discussed in the following chapter. Hahn-Hahn dreams of the
paradise which could blossom here with the help of "ein paar
tausend tfichtige, fleiBige, arbeitgewohnte, brave, deutsche
Hande" (129). Even though she rejects the idea of colonial
intervention, she does have colonial fantasies just like
Martins.

One of the main problems facing the Orient, according
to Hahn-Hahn is a lack of needs and a corresponding
reluctance to work. Protestant work ethic has played a
determining role in the perception of the Other. This work
ethic holds that the purpose of life is work. Work to
satisfy your needs. Without needs, however there can be no
development. If you are content with your lot, or leave
everything to kismet or fate (l: 360), then there is no
incentive to work, your mind remains inactive and you sink
into a state of inertia. The Orientals may lead a contented
life, but it was a remarkably monotonous one, since it was
bereft of the impulses which derive from any but the most
basic needs. Needs therefore become the driving force in
any society.

For Hahn-Hahn the ability to work is the distinguishing
factor between humans and animals. A person living in a

state of idleness is little better than an animal. "Nichts

111

zu brauchen als den Platz auf dem man eben liegt, auf
demselben mit Speise Trank und Schlaf zu vegetieren: diesen
Vorzug teilt man am Ende mit jedem Thier" (l: 170). The
discourse equates "nichts zu brauchen" with "vege-tier-en"
implying that the lack of needs results in indolence, a
characteristic shared with animals.

Her judgments are rooted in her class values, as the
description of the British Consul's house in Damascus
reveals:

Ein andrer Geist erffillt es, der Geist der
Ansprfiche an Cultur und Bildung macht. Da sind
Bficher, Kupferstiche, Karten, ... die
hunderttausend ... Kleinigkeiten des verfeinerten
Lebens, die ... ein Product ... der erhfihten
Civilisation sind. (2: 56)

The Orient, on the other hand, is characterized by a
lack of taste, indicative of the mental condition of the
inhabitants: "Jenes Element, das wir hfiher als den Luxus
achten, die Elegance ist dem Tfirken durchaus unbekannt. ...
Ein rohes Volk ... kann nicht elegant sein, es hangt ... ein
wenig mit geistigen Eigenschaften zusammen" (l: 180). She
supports her claim by quoting the British Consul who states,
"Man deterorirt sich geistig im Orient" (2: 56). These
attributes of elegance and taste are used as distancing
devices, to prove the superiority of the Europeans, and are

anchored in Hahn-Hahn's class values.

112

Hahn-Hahn points at the failure to develop modern
habits of consumption. The Oriental indifference to
European virtues of comfort, efficiency, variety and taste,
as illustrated by the absence of furniture, is perceived as
"bestial" and "filthy." She is repelled by the Oriental
custom of sitting on the ground, "dies ewige Herumwalzen auf
der Erde, dies ewige Kauern auf allen Vieren," and calls it
"hfichst ungrazifis," "monstrfis," "nnanstandig ffir Menschen"
and "thierisch" (l: 170). The civilizing mission has to
begin literally from the ground upwards:

Wie kann man ein Volk civilisiren, das sich wie
das Vieh besténdig am Boden herumwfihlt und walzt,
und keinen andern Tisch, noch Stuhl, noch Lager
kennt als den Staub und Schmutz der Erde. Auf vom
Boden muB es! so lange es da unten in seinen
gleichsam vierbeinigen Gewohnheiten verbleibt,
wird die thierische Existenz die vorherrschende
und eine Mauer gegen die Kultur sein. (3: 362)

This extract centers around the theme of elevation and the
difference between the higher order of spirituality and the
lower order of instinctuality, which makes humans animals.
As Magli illustrates, this division can be traced back to
Aristotle, who applied it to the physiognomy of man.
According to Aristotle nature has placed the nobler parts of
the body (the eyes, the forehead, the heart) in the upper
parts of the body, pointing to the cosmos, while the less
noble parts (the mouth, the abdomen, sexual organs), are

7

located lower down pointing to the ground.1 Blumenbach

113

also attributed the difference between humans and animals to
the former's erect posture. The ground is thus associated
with bestiality, sexuality, excrement. These elements of the
savage have to be sublimated by culture and substituted by
humanity, rationality and intellect.18

Culture or civilization is measured by the variety and
quantity of material possessions or consumer goods. These
capitalistic notions are seen as the necessary agents of
change. The Turks must be transformed from an indolent mass
lacking taste and needs into a productive labor force and a
market for European consumer goods. The next chapter

demonstrates the efforts of a German missionary to do just

this.

8. The Noble Savage

While the Turks are condemned for their animalistic
ways, in that they are satisfied with the most basic needs
and do not aim any higher, the Bedouins are praised and
glorified for their idyllic, simple lifestyle. Hahn-Hahn
describes it as: "ein Stfickchen paradiesischen Lebens:
Menschen in den einfachsten befriedigendsten Verhaltnissen,
deren Wfinsche und Bedfirfnisse vollkommen der Sphére
entsprechen, welche sie ausffillen sollen" (2: 270). The
Bedouins serve as a foil to criticize Europe, which had
strayed away from the original state of natural harmony and

had become mechanical, rational and artificial. While the

114
Europeans are described as "die glanzenden und verkfimmerten
Opfer unsrer Cultur," the Bedouins are called "das Geschfipf
Gottes" and compared with raw silk, unrefined and natural
(2: 265). Europeans are products of their nation, class and
office, bound down by social norms which regulate every
aspect of their lives. The price paid for civilization is
freedom and individuality, both of which the Bedouins enjoy
to the fullest degree, while Europeans are constricted and
lead an artificial existence. Europe is:

ein Treibhaus, das sehr interessante ... Pflanzen
kfinstlich erzeugt, und die Prodnkte von Geist,
Erfindungskraft, Forschung, Studium, ...
aufzuweisen hat: folglich geht von selbst daraus
hervor, daB es den schlichten Boden nicht hat, auf
dem die eine starke Pflanze der Freiheit gedeiht -
und nur sie. (2: 278)

Projecting her fantasies on to the Bedouins, Hahn-Hahn
idealizes their way of life:

Die Ehe ist ernst und streng; ... Die Kinder
machen den Weibern wenig Mfihe; sie werden leicht
und schnell geboren, ... Von der Geburt bis zum
Grabe ist das Leben nie eine Last, nie ein Kampf,
...: keine Unruh ffir die Zukunft, kein
Mtiergnfigen mit der Gegenwart, keine Rene fiber
die Vergangenheit, kein Grfibeln ins Nichts, kein
Fliegen durchs All. (2: 276)

The Protestant work ethic which emphasizes "Mfihe," "Last"
and "Kampf" as ways of getting ahead, and which she had

recommended with regard to the Turks, does not play a role

115
here. She hopes the Bedouins remain untouched by
civilization, explaining: "Denn wild sind sie natfirlich, ...
und gebildet gar nicht. Eine Zeitung haben sie nie in den
Hinden gehabt, nie eine Oper gehfirt, nie eine
Kunstausstellung gesehen" (2: 273).

If the Turks were criticized for their apparent lack of
culture and material needs, the Bedouins are extolled for
their natural and pure existence. They embody the African
desert myth of undisturbed tranquility and freedom. A
factor that could account for this partiality is physical
beauty, or, more to the point, masculine beauty of the
Bedouins. In Constantinople, Hahn-Hahn was struck by the
absence of young male faces, and concluded that all Turks
look old. In contrast, the Bedouins who carry her up the
pyramid in Gaza are "Statuen von dunkler Bronze," a
reference to classical Greek sculptures. They make her
exclaim in delight: “nie sah ich sfiperbere Menschen!" (253).

The Bedouins are not only objects of aesthetic pleasure
but also of erotic desire. There is a subtext of eroticism
in the description of the ascent of the pyramid, which
itself can be read as a metapher for the sexual act. Hahn-
Hahn describes the Bedouins undress in preparation for the
ascent. Left in their tunics, without their cloaks, they
remind Hahn-Hahn of Osiris, the ruler of the underworld.
Words like "Schwindel," "gewaltsam abgebrochen," "matt,"

"schneller steigen," "Freudengeschrei" share the imagery of

116
sexual intercourse (253). In contrast to patriarchal
discourse, where the woman is turned into an object of
erotic desire, here it is the Bedouin, who serves as a
cipher for Hahn-Hahn's sexual fantasies.

The Bedouins' virtues lie in their handsome appearance,
their fierce independence and masculinity, their simple,
nomadic lifestyle. Intelligence does not play a major role
in Hahn-Hahn's evaluation of them. As she states: "der
gebildete Mann braucht Intelligenz, der Barbar Schfinheit -
sonst sind beide unausstehlich" (57). Hahn-Hahn adopts the
role of "der gebildete Mann" abroad and treats “der Barbar"
as women were treated in Europe, i.e. as objects of beauty
and desire. Sigrid Weigel discusses these interlocking
tropes in Eighteenth Century discourse about women and "der
Wilde." Both are represented as closer to "nature," guided
by instinct, rather than by reason. Like innocent children,
they too have to be socialized/civilized. Both embody the
unknown or unexplored: women with regard to their sexuality
and the savage as the inhabitant of an unknown

territory.19

The dichotomy between culture and nature is
used to "other" both women and non-Europeans. Hahn-Hahn
uses the same strategy in reverse with regard to the
”Barbar." Just as European women (the Other within) were
reduced to their sex, the Bedouins are judged according to

the norms of masculine beauty: their primeval strength,

erotic masculinity, and robust or athletic appearance.

117
9. Behind The Veil: The World of the Harem

Male travelers to the Orient often represented the
harem as an eroticized space, filled with creatures of male
sexual fantasies. How then did a European woman react to
the harem and represent women who belonged to the same
gender but to a different race? Hahn-Hahn's letters give
detailed reports on the women's appearance, fashions and
lifestyle. She also discusses the institution of marriage,
the degree of independence and power enjoyed by women, and
the common practice of abortion.

The harem is one area where the discourse of the Other
changes slightly due to the gender of the traveler. It is
no longer a sexually available space, used to express erotic
desires. Instead these desires are projected onto the
Bedouins, while the harem and its women become symbols of
intellectual stagnation, boredom and confinement. While
this treatment of the harem has lent itself to feminist
interpretations of Hahn-Hahn's writings, few critics have

20 In her article,

looked at it within a colonial context.
"The Discourse of the Veil" Leila Ahmed uses the term
"colonial feminism," i.e. a brand of feminism used by both
men and women travelers against other cultures in the
service of colonialism.21 According to Ahmed, colonial
discourse appropriates the language of feminism to morally

justify the attack on native society and support the notion

of European superiority. The discussion which revolved

118
around the themes of the harem and polygamy was used to
illustrate the advancement of European society and the
backwardness and degeneration of Oriental ways.22
Indirectly then, this criticism pointed to the necessity of
elevating Orientals to Western ways.
The case of Ida Hahn-Hahn is especially interesting in

this context, because in Germany she fought for the

emancipation of women, writing novels, like Der Rechte

 

(1839), Grafin Faustine (1840) and Zwei Frauen (1845). In

 

 

Der Rechte she questions the traditional roles assigned to

 

the sexes according to their "natural" gender-specific
characteristics. She rebels against a society with double
standards for men and women. While it regards man as a
rational individual with an independent will, it sees women
as dependent creatures determined by their sex. Hahn-Hahn
proposes that the differences between the sexes are socially

3

constructed and must be changed.2 In Grafin Faustine,

 

Hahn-Hahn goes beyond the traditional female roles of mother
and wife and creates a character who, as the name Faustine
suggests, is more than a mere appendage of man. She is
depicted as an individual in her own right with her own

ideas, desires and goals. In Zwei Frauen Hahn-Hahn

 

criticizes the inequalities in marital relationships which
make the husband lord and master over his wife, who is
treated as a submissive slave ready to please his every

whim. She advocates equality between the partners based on

119
self-determination.24 While writing about the women of
the harem, however, she remains within the confines of
patriarchal discourse.
On visiting a harem in Constantinople she describes
herself,

von einer Weiberschaar umringt, vor der ich
ffirmlich erschrack, so hafllich war sie. ... Sie
larmten, lachten, schrien um mich herum,
betrachteten mich, faBten meine Hands an -... die
Wilden der Sfidsee kfinnen nicht wilder in ihrer
Neugier sein. ... Aber der Harem macht stupid nnd
roh, ... (2: 73).

Traditionally, the harem was portrayed as a paradise, a
repository guarding the secrets of love, passion, beauty and
poetry. The women in Hahn-Hahn's account of the harem are a
far cry from the ravishing, gazelle-eyed angels of paradise.
Instead their desperate behavior suggests that they are
raving mad, confined in a lunatic asylum. Hahn-Hahn
attributes this behavior to the lack of social intercourse
between the sexes, which she holds responsible for the
development of a certain delicacy and refinement, alien to
women in the harem. Women like these, without a trace of
good manners resemble animals. "80 eine Masse roher Weib zu
sehen, ist mir schrecklich. Lieber sehe ich eine Heerde
Kfihe oder Schaafe. Der Harem erniedrigt das Weib zum Vieh"
(2: 74). She adopts a patriarchal perspective, which views
women who are secluded and barred from the society of men as

necessarily deprived. Seclnsion leads to their

120
infantilization, lunacy and degradation. Societies which
practice rigid segregation of the sexes are regarded as
necessarily more oppressive to women than sexually
integrated societies.

Hahn-Hahn finds the use of the veil distasteful and
wishes she could set her eyes on women, instead of "diese
vermummten Gestalten," who do little to brighten up the
streets (56). Here again she adopts a male perspective,
which regards the role of women in aesthetic terms as agents

25 The veil, however,

for beautifying their surroundings.
also acts as a shield against the penetrating gaze of the
observer. By covering and protecting the person behind it,
the veil denies Hahn-Hahn the power conferred by sight,
which exposes and reveals, turning the observed into an
object of curiosity. The direction of the gaze is now
reversed, since it is the veiled who can see but remain
unseen.

More than anything else, Hahn-Hahn deplores the
isolation and boredom of the harem, which robs the women of
all intellectual vigor. The only activity that these women
are familiar with, besides entertaining, is spending their
time in the baths: "Die ewig sitzende Lebensart, die ewigen,
heiBen Bfider, der ewige GenuB von Zuckerwerk ... nehmen den
Gestalten allen Nerv. Wie Fleischklumpen sehen sie ans"

(56). They have no contact with their husband's world and

live in an unnatural environment, surrounded by rivals, and

121
spied on by eunuchs. They remain idle and pass time
scheming against one another and planning intrigues, which
give rise to envy, jealousy and hatred. She calls the harem
"das Brutnest aller bfisen Eigenschaften ..., deren Keime im
Character des Weibes schlummern" (38). Once again the
company of males is considered essential for mental and
intellectual development. Deprived of this company, the
savage repressed within the nature of woman raises its ugly
head. Man is therefore the necessary counterbalance for the
negatives in a woman's character.

In an angry letter to her mother, Hahn-Hahn criticizes
European male writers who are ignorant about the harem, but
continue to insist that Oriental women are actually quite
content to live within the confines of the harem. Hahn-Hahn
retorts, "Hat sich je eine Kuh auf der grfinen Wiese
unglficklich geffihlt? Der Harem ist eine Wiese, die den
Bedfirfnissen des animalischen Lebens genfigt. Basta" (153).
While their basic material needs may be satisfied, their
intellectual needs are neglected. She comments "... mehr
noch als der Leib, wohnt hier der Geist im Kafig" (86).

Unfortunately Hahn-Hahn does not explore this area
further. She does not discuss why these women are in harems
in the first place, why they are rivals at all, why they are
being spied on? Who are the eunuchs serving? She does,
however, criticize the existing opinion that Oriental women

are accustomed to the harem and that they have accepted it

122
out of sheer habit. But she uses her argument to imply the
depravity of such women:

Ja, sie treten in das Joch des Harems, und dessen
Form ist ihnen zur Gewohnheit geworden; aber gegen
den Inhalt straubt sich ihr Instinkt .... Da keine
Geistes- und Seelenbildung ihn [den Instinkt]
bandigt und regelt, wie sollte es da nicht zu den
heftigsten Ausbrfichen, zu den tiefsten
Gemeinheiten, zu den grfiBten Grausamkeiten kommen.
(39)

In the West culture and religion help to temper these baser
instincts. But in the East, where culture is totally
absent, the rebellious instinct leads to "the most violent
outbursts, the lowest vulgarities, the greatest cruelties."
By not specifying what these crimes are, she leaves the
field wide open for the reader's imagination: abortion,
lesbianism, murder. Her criticism is thus directed more
towards a lack of so-called culture, rather than against a
male-dominated society, which supports the institution of
the harem. In fact, an important part of the culture she
recommends is the presence of males.

These opinions differ considerably from those of
another woman traveler to the East, Lady Mary Montagu, who
regarded the veil as a disguise, behind which women could
escape the narrow confines of the harem and enjoy a

25 Similarly, the baths

considerable degree of freedom.
served as a venue, where women could assemble and escape

from a male dominated society. The difference in opinions

123
can be attributed to what Pratt calls reciprocal vision
(Imperial Eyes 81). Montagu portrays herself as subjected

to the scrutiny of the women in the harem.27 She puts

 

herself in the place of these women (the observed), by
actually wearing a veil, and by joining them in the baths,
instead of looking on as an outsider. She is therefore able
to acquire a new perspective.

Although Hahn-Hahn had experienced an unhappy marriage
and had consequently defied the patriarchal ideal of
womanhood not only in her novels but also in her own
personal life, she employs this ideal in order to criticize
the practices of another culture and emphasize the
superiority of her own culture. While the emancipated
characters of her novels, like Faustine, go beyond the

traditional role of motherhood, in Orientalische Briefe,

 

Hahn-Hahn advocates motherhood as the natural state for
woman and attacks the common practice of abortion: "Familien
wo die Weiber nicht Mfitter sein mfigen, ... ist der Gipfel
der Unnatur und kann nichts andres als ein Zeichen
bedeutenden Verfalls sein" (l: 300).

The Western ideals of conjugal love and monogamous
marriage are held up against polygamy. Marriage in the
Orient is not founded on love, but on sensuality. Polygamy
is responsible for the debasement of man, because it permits
him to know his wife only as an object of his sexual desire

(3: 332). The Oriental wife, hidden behind a veil, is

124
regarded as a prisoner and a slave, rather than a companion
to her husband. Her Opinions are male-centered. For
example, while attacking the custom of older men marrying
young girls, she remarks that a child cannot cope with the
burdens of marriage and is therefore bound to displease her

husband (3: 332). Yet, in her novel, Grafin Faustine, she

 

criticizes women who are always at the beck and call of
their husbands, as if they were their slaves.28 The
discourse of the harem thus undermines Hahn-Hahn's feminist
writings.

Oriental vocabulary (slaves, harem) is used in Europe
to fight for women's rights, but in the Orient itself, the
oppression of women at home is denied. This is evident in
her comparison between the position of women in the Orient
with that at home: "welch eine Wonne, ... zu den Vfilkern
germanischen Stammes zn gehfiren, bei denen ... das Weib den
Platz eines Menschen einnahm" (153).29 In contrast the
Oriental woman is "nie eine Person, stets eine Sache" (3:
332). The claims towards a superior civilization are fought
over the issue of women and their treatment. Hahn-Hahn
states: "Die Polygamie ist eine Mauer, welche den Orient
gegen Christentum absperrt" (153).30 This metaphor occurs
again in the next chapter as a part of evangelical
discourse, which claims that Christianity teaches respect

towards women, whereas all other religions degraded them.

125

Hahn-Hahn blames the harem for making the princes weak
and effeminate. The prince is raised and educated in the
harem, so that he is not a threat to the existing leader.
Being surrounded constantly by women and eunuchs would
hardly contribute to the development of those qualities,
necessary for a strong and respected leader. Instead of
raising a man fit to be king, the harem serves as the
breeding ground for "krfippelhafte Pflanzen" (1: 299). Thus
Hahn-Hahn actually makes the harem, i.e. the women partly
responsible for the deterioration and weakening of the
empire, because of their capacity to influence future
leaders. She talks about "das Weiberregiment," and
describes Sultan Abdul-Medjid in the embraces of a thousand-
headed hydra (38); in other words, his harem. The harem is
thus not only a barrier between woman and her elevation, but

also between a nation and its progress.

10. The Slave Market

Ida Hahn-Hahn's visit to the slave market in
Constantinople reveals her ambivalent attitude to women of a
different race. Writing to her brother, she builds up the
atmosphere by describing the surroundings, the narrow, dark
chambers, which house the slaves and the gallery where the
sellers, buyers and curious spectators like herself
congregate. The sight of the slaves is greeted with an

exclamation of shock, "O Entsetzenl schauderhafter,

126
abstoBender AnblickI" (l: 175). This, however, is not a
reaction against the injustice of the institution of slavery
and the degradation of human beings. It is rather a protest
against the appearance of Negro slaves, the victims of
slavery, who present a sight too monstrous for one as
aesthetically refined as Ida Hahn-Hahn.

As Sander Gilman observes, the Black's features were a
visual metaphor for ugliness in the iconography of the
eighteenth century. Aesthetic theories attempted to explain
and categorize the negative reactions to the Black, thus
maintaining the fiction of the Black as intrinsically
different. According to Burke the perception of the Black
produces fear and terror. Lessing on the other hand saw the
Black as the source of disgust and the comic.31

Hahn-Hahn continues by urging her brother to summon all
his powers of imagination and assures him he would still be
nowhere close to picturing the monsters which met her eyes.
It is not slaves per se who revolt her. It is these
particular slaves, for they are "Negerinnen." Disappointed
that she could not view the "Georgierinnen," and the
"Circassierinnen," the fairest of them all, she has to be

contented with this "ignoble sight" of "nur Schwarze":

Da sitzen sie! ein grobes grauweiBes Gewand
verhfillt die Gestalt; bunte Glasringe umgeben die
Handgelenke, bunte Glasperlen den Hals. Das Haar
tragen sie kurz abgeschnitten; die deprimirte
Stirn, tief eingedrfickt fiber den Augenbrauen wie

127

bei den Cretins, fallt zuerst auf, dann das groBe
rollende nichtssagende Ange, dann die Nase, die
ohne Nasebein eine nnffirmliche Masse zu sein
scheint, dann der Mund mit der affrfisen
thierischen Bildung der vorspringenden Kinnladen,
und mit den klaffenden schwarzen Lippen - ... dann
die langfingerigen affischen Hande mit hafllich
farblosen Nageln, dann die spindeldfirren Beine mit
der heraustretenden Ferse: dann, und am Meisten,
das unerhfirt Thierische der ganzen Erscheinung,
Form und Ausdruck inbegriffen. ... Sie geben kein
Lebenszeichen von sich, sie starren uns an mit
demselben bewuBtlosen Blick mit dem sie sich
untereinander anstarren. (l: 176)

The most striking aspect of this description is the
recurring reference to the beast and the consequent
dehumanization of the slaves. The slaves are described like
animals on display at a circus dressed up in cheap and gaudy
knick-knacks. There is nothing noble or dignified in their
stature or their features. They are not seen as cultural
beings, with their own history or families, but as bodies
and appendages exposed to the curious gaze of the spectator.
Like Martins, Hahn-Hahn textually dismembers the body parts
from the whole and describes them as if they were discrete
objects.

While each body part is distinguishable, the whole
constitutes an anomaly, resembling a monster: neither human,
nor animal. They are seen as products of an "unnatural"

mixture of genetic strains, a cross between different

128
species. This incestuous or depraved quality is alluded to
again in the description of the Egyptian peasant, which
Hahn-Hahn concludes by asking, " ... ist in dem Allen nicht
die thierische Beimischung vorherrschend?" (3: 360). These
descriptions recall Hahn-Hahn's reference to the Orientals'
"four-legged habits" and her use of the words "Herumwfilzen,"
"Herumwfihlen" and "Kauern auf der Erde," which underscore
the bestiality of the Orientals and question the anatomical
distinctions made by Blumenbach between humans and apes.
They reflect an anxiety about the concept of universal
humanity, an uncertainty regarding the boundaries between
humans and beast, a fear of degenerating to the level of a
beast.

The technique of using features and characteristics of
animals to describe the indigenous people is used frequently
in travel writing. Regarding the Other more as an animal
increases the distance between observer and observed. The
traveler can observe them without having to identify with
them. The captive eagle in Schfinbrunn provokes more
sympathy in Hahn-Hahn than the slaves:

... ein Tier rfihrt mich ganz unsaglich, und das
ist der Adler, denn er gibt im Kafig das
schmerzlichste Bild von dem namenlosen Leid der
Gefangenschaft. Unbeweglich sitzt er da, ... er
scheint sich versteinert zu haben gegen sein
Schicksal; nichts lebt an ihm, als sein Ange, und
das ist ein wunderschfines, menschenahnliches Ange
... Und mit diesem melancholischen ... Ange, ...

129

das in rastloser Bewegung ist, blickt er nie die
Menschen, seine Peiniger an, sondern immer in
einen freien Raum. (18)

The eagle acquires human characteristics: proud, dignified,
melancholic, and expressive. The slaves on the other hand
are dehumanized and their bestiality emphasized. The eagle
is seen as a victim, its captors labelled as tormenters,
while the slaves are described as impassive and oblivious to
their fate, the slave dealers just another profession. The
major difference between the slaves and the eagle is
centered in their eyes, (the noble sensory organ). The
slaves' vision is described with the words "nichtssagend,"
"starren" and "bewuBtlosen Blick." This emotionless posture
is contrasted with the active gaze of the eagle. The
emphasis on sight is not surprising for a traveler, since
she is also the possessor of the observer's gaze, with which
she represents others.

The moment of non-recognition cannot last forever.
What the slaves tell Hahn-Hahn, and what she does not want
to acknowledge is, that she is kin with them. When the
boundaries between Self and its Other collapse, and the
realization dawns on Hahn-Hahn, that these creatures are
also women, like her, she is appalled at first. She then
reestablishes the boundaries by building new hierarchies
within the sexes. She wonders how women like Sappho and
Maria Stuart, both paragons of intelligence and beauty,

could belong to the same sex. She concludes: "Nein! denn

130
ein Weib ohne Intelligenz ist kein Weib mehr, sondern nur
noch - ... une femelle" (l: 177). Whereas the word "Weib"
has a human and cultural value, "femelle" reduces the
referent to just the biological sex. From sexless
monstrosities the slaves are transformed to just their sex.
Although her ultimate criterion seems to be intelligence,
she forgets that she judged the slaves only on the basis of
their appearance.

The slaves are reduced to dehumanized entities,
stripped of their identity, regarded and treated as mere
commodities. The commodity value of these slaves is
illustrated by the language of chatteldom:

Ein Kaufer kommt, mustert sie; ... es ist ihnen
gleichgfiltig. Sie werden gemessen in der Hfihe und
Breite wie ein Waarenballen, untersucht an Handen,
Hfiften, FfiBen, Zahnen wie ein Pferd, ... sie
lassen Alles geschehen, ohne Scheu, ohne Zorn,
ohne Schmerz. ... unbekfimmert um ihr Schicksal.
(1: 176-77)

Hahn-Hahn is not struck by the inhumanity of the procedure.
She uses this opportunity to describe the apparent lack of
emotions, the total unconcern on the part of the slaves with
regard to their fate, which adds to their animal-like
quality. Instead of sympathy for the slaves, she finds
respect for the slave dealers, who go about their business
"mit Anstand," for the slaves are not obliged to strip of

their clothes.

131

The sight of the slaves brings out suppressed anxieties
in Hahn-Hahn about the boundaries between the races. It
convinces Hahn-Hahn that the difference between the races
cannot be bridged. At the same time, she does not see the
slaves as a different species, like the polygenists.
Because of the influence of Enlightened thought which
stressed the unity of humankind, she has to accept, in the
end, that these creatures are like her, and that racial
identity is a chance factor:

Die RacenI von deren Verschiedenheit wird man
durchdrungen, wenn man im Geist eine solche
Schwarze neben eine Aspasia stellt; und die Kluft
welche diese beiden Wesen trennt kann kein
Philanthrop ableugnen. Wir sind von Staub und wir
gehen zum Staub; aber ffir die Paar Jahre die ich
lebe danke ich denn doch meinem Schfipfer, daB es
ihm gefallen hat mir eine weiBe Staubeshfille

zu geben. (l: 178)

Both, the language of equality in Hahn-Hahn's writings, (eg.
wir sind von Staub ..., wir alle sind Kinder eines Hauses
etc.) and the language of hierarchy (the reference to
Aspasia, Maria Stuart, and Sappho) occur together,
undercutting the very equality claimed by Enlightened
thought.

As demonstrated in this chapter, Hahn-Hahn's letters
reveal several contradictions. Most of these contradictions
can be attributed to the nature of Oriental discourse,

rather than to discursive constraints on women writers. The

132
discourse places the Orient in three different categories of
time. Firstly, it constructs the Orient as a civilization
which after reaching its zenith, declined and faded away,
leaving behind majestic ruins as records of and memorials to
the passage of time. In this model, the Orient has
undergone a historical process. Secondly, the Orient is
perceived as a static, unchanging and timeless tableau,
populated by biblical figures and deprived of that essence
of progress: the principle of motion. This model
dehistoricizes the Orient. Lastly, the Orient is
constructed as a civilization in decline, inhabited by
dissipated, indolent Turks and diseased sultans. Only this
model shares the same time frame as Europe: the present.

These contradictions are not surprising, since as Said
states, "it is in the logic of myths, like dreams, to
welcome antitheses. For a myth does not analyze or solve
problems. It represents them as already analyzed and solved
... as already assembled images" (312). The construction of
the Orient in these letters is a hybrid of already assembled
images.

Similarly contradictions arise while describing the
Turks and the Bedouins. The Turks are criticized for their
indifference to European goods, which are seen as indicators
of civilization. But when Hahn-Hahn visits a harem, which
does possess all the trappings of European aristocratic

culture, from the silver tableware to the flower vases, she

133
ridicules it, asking her reader, "Hattest Du diese
Hyperkultur in einem Harem geahnt?" (85). The Bedouins are
praised for their enviable simplicity, their daily needs
reduced to the bare minimum of tent, mat and pipe. But the
absence of material possessions reduces Turks to the level
of animals, to the ground literally. At the same time
Europe is criticized for its artificial and materialistic
civilization. Hahn-Hahn ends her letters with a warning to
Europe: "Ach, wie bedfirfnislos ist der OrientaleI Am
eigenen fiberfluB muB Europa untergehen. Was sein Stolz und
Triumph ist, wird sein Verderben werden" (342). It is
therefore obvious that Hahn-Hahn goes to the Orient with
certain preconceived images of the Turk, the Bedouin, the
harem and these shape her vision and the resulting
discourse.

Contrary to Sara Mill's analysis of women travelers'
writings, these letters show little effect of the
constraints of gender. Rather, Hahn-Hahn adopts a definite
male role abroad: she discusses all the "serious" topics,
like politics and government, with confidence, contradicting
existing opinions and suggesting alternatives. Not only is
she the hardy adventure "hero," she also adopts a
characteristic authoritative stance over the Other and vis-
a-vis her readers at home. This authority is embodied in
the observer's gaze which unveils the Orient and reveals the

reality behind the facade of grandeur. However this reality

134
is only another representation. The discourse constructs
the Orient in a state of neglect, disorder and confusion,
waiting to be put back into order by Europe. The botanical
imagery suggests that the Orient is a passive female,
waiting to be fertilized or resurrected by Europe. It also
suggests that the Orient is an impotent and powerless male,
waiting to be subjugated by Europe. The Orientals are
constructed as indolent and bestial, who need to be elevated
to the status of humans.

Thus even though Hahn-Hahn transgresses physical
boundaries through the act of travel, she does not cross
mental boundaries, and instead internalizes and reproduces
the existing discourse, which treats the Other as "woman,"
as inferior. However, although Hahn-Hahn employs the same
tropes that emerge in men's writings about the Orient, some
of these tropes are used in a different fashion. Male
sexual fantasies, which normally turn women into objects of
desire, are displaced onto the Bedouins, while the women of
the harem are constructed as devoid of intellectual vigor.
It is these factors which make her letters different from
men's writings about the Orient. At the same time, she
remains within the model of Orientalism, which portrays the
Orient as a source of magnetic attraction, an exotic tableau
jouissance.

The subject of "women" and their treatment is often

used in travel literature and especially in missionary

135
writings to illustrate the advancement of European society
and the backwardness of other societies, implying that these
women need to be rescued by their Christian brothers and
sisters. The next chapter illustrates the efforts of a
missionary to convert the people of South West Africa and

bring them into the fold of Christianity.

CHAPTER IV
Evangelical Discourse and the Other

The Germans were the last imperial power to arrive in
Africa, annexing South West Africa in 1884. The groundwork,
however, had already been laid by explorers and
missionaries. Travel accounts by explorers like, Friedrich
Konrad Hornemann (1772-1800), Heinrich Barth (1821-65) and
Lichtenstein (1780-1857) had awakened an interest in Africa
among the public, which eventually turned into a cry for
colonies.1 Similarly, the missionaries were not only
messengers of the Gospel, but also propagators of their
national cultures, contributing to the socio-cultural
transformation of the indigenous societies. Missionary
activity was not merely restricted to expanding the Kingdom
of Jesus; it was a form of cultural colonialism, which paved
the way for economic and political colonialism. In fact,
the missionaries in Namibia were quite vocal in their
support for colonialism, welcoming German immigrants and
requesting the presence of European troops to help terminate
tribal wars and improve the conditions for the evangelizing
mission.

In this chapter I will focus on the private diaries of
Carl Hugo Hahn, a protestant missionary from the Rhenish

Missionary Society, who was sent to Nama- and Damaraland

136

137

(Namibia) in 1842.2

The diaries, spanning a period of
twenty three years, 1837-1860, inform the reader about the
hardships of missionary life and give insights into Hahn's
views on the target of his evangelical message, i.e., the
indigenous peoples of South West Africa, particularly the
Hereros and the Namas. They illustrate how missionary
activity, which sought to dominate by inclusion and

domestication rather than confrontation, eventually led to

the establishment of colonial rule.

1. Origins of the Nineteenth Century Missionary Movement
The nineteenth century witnessed an extraordinary
expansion of Christian missionary activity especially in
Protestant countries. In Germany alone, a number of
missionary societies were founded: e.g. the Berlin Mission
(1824), the Rhenish Mission in Barmen (1828), the
Norddeutsche (Bremer) Mission, and the Leipzig Mission
(1836). Missionary literature acquired a wide readership:

the most popular magazine was the Barmer Missionsblatt with
3

 

a circulation of 18,000 in 1848.
This surge of missionary zeal has religious, as well as
socio-economic reasons. One of the main initiators was the
revival of pietism in Germany, which stressed personal
commitment, the centrality of individual sin and the
capacity to be born anew. It "denounced the rationalism

inherited from the eighteenth century, [and] held to the

138

4 The revival was strongly

inerrancy of the Bible ...".
evangelist in nature, encouraging its followers to "go forth
to every part of the world and proclaim the good news to the
whole of creation“ (Matt. 28:19). The millennaristic belief
in the Second Coming (Rev. 20: 1-5) also gave an impetus to
preaching the Gospel and "converting the heathen" in
preparation for God's Kingdom on earth.

The modern missionary movement is closely linked with
the industrial revolution and the rise of the bourgeoisie.
The first Protestant mission societies were founded in more
industrialized areas, like England and Wuppertal in Germany.
The new missions, which were now free from secular control,
were mainly financed and administered by the educated middle
class. The laity, which rose to prominence after the
revival, was recruited from the lower middle class. The
foreign missions also served the economic interests of the
bourgeoisie, since they were seen as a possibility for
expanding trade. The missions were not adverse to this
idea, since they perceived commerce as providential: God's
mysterious way of bringing the Gospel to the heathens. Thus
both "Christianity and Commerce" (Livingstone) would work
hand in hand to bring the non-Christians into the fold of
civilization.

The economic situation in Germany contributed to the
popularity of the profession. Between 1815 and 1845 the

population of Germany grew from 25 million to 34.5 million.

.139
Economic growth barely kept ahead of the rising population.
The agrarian crisis in the first half of the century further
aggravated the situation. All these factors contributed to
the great wave of German emigration, which began after 1815
and eased only after the 50's.5 Missionary work was
another type of emigration. As Grfinder points out, the
export of missionaries acted as a necessary outlet for
demographic pressures, and economic survival. For craftsmen
and farmers this was an opportunity for gaining upward

mobility and social respect (321).

2. Carl Hugo Hahn: Biographical Details

Hugo Hahn, a Baltic German, was born in 1818 in Riga.
He initially wanted to join the military service. Although
he passed the required exam, he could not join the service
immediately, due to the lack of vacancies, these positions
being largely reserved for the sons of officers. Hahn,
however, regarded this as providential, since it was then
that he was "awakened" by the sight of a young child praying
devoutly before a meal. Hahn describes the transfiguring
impact of this experience: "Wie ein Stich fuhr es mir ins
Herz, und kaum vermochte ich mich der Tranen der Scham nnd
inneren Zerschlagenheit zu erwehren. ... Meine Stunde war
gekommen, ... " (279). He was then persuaded by his
brother-in-law, a minister, to study theology. Soon after

this experience, he decided to preach the Gospel to the

140
"Heiden." In 1837, he left Riga for the Rhenish Mission
Society in Barmen. After nearly three years in seminary, he
was ordained as a minister in 1841 and sailed for Cape Town,

to work with the Damaras.

3. Nama- and Damaraland

Cape Town in the nineteenth century was the starting
point for all expeditions north of the Orange River, which
formed the boundary for Europeans between civilization and
terra incognita. South West Africa, unlike other parts of
coastal Africa, was not accessible from its Atlantic shores
because of the Namib desert, which sheltered the region from
European penetration for centuries. While the Portuguese
had developed strongholds in Mombasa and Luanda already in
the fifteenth century, using them as ports en route to
India, Namibia remained relatively free from European
incursions for another four centuries. The Kalahari in the
west and the Etosha pan (dry salt lake) to the north further
sealed Namibia from outsiders. Thus, missionaries and
traders could only enter "Great Namaqualand," as southern
and central Namibia was known then, from Cape Colony in the
South.

The first missionaries crossed the Orange River only at
the turn of the eighteenth century. In 1805, the Albrecht
brothers were sent by the London Missionary Society to

assess the potential for developing a mission among Nama

141
tribes. They were followed by Johann Heinrich Schmelen, who
started a mission in Steinkopf (Kookfontein) in 1818. These
men did not invade an empty space.6 South West Africa was
inhabited by the Ovambo, the Herero, the Damara, and
different Nama groups. The Cape, on the other hand, had
already been occupied by the Dutch in 1652. With the
expansion of the Cape economy and the growth of urban
centers, Boer farmers settled along the coast of South
Africa, moved further inland, claiming land and resources
extending beyond the colonial borders.

The victims of this expansion were the local Khoisan
people, who, dispossessed of their land and cattle, were
forced to become indentured labor. In order to escape this
servile existence, some served as guides for colonials or
herders for Dutch farmers, receiving firearms and ammunition
in return and eventually regaining their autonomy. They
formed commando units, and pushed further north to find
better grazing land or to raid cattle from the Namas. which
was then traded in exchange for more guns and horses. These
autonomous Khoisan came to be known as Oorlams. They had

7 and

"received a considerable infiltration of white blood"
had in many ways been influenced by contact with Dutch and
other colonists. Several Oorlam men could speak Dutch and
had been baptized. The most prominent Oorlam family was the
Afrikaner (//Aixa//ain). Jager Afrikaner settled in

Blydeverwacht, southern Namibia in 1790.

142

The Oorlam migrations/invasions continued into the
18308, leading to violent conflicts with the Nama groups,
who were subjugated into relinquishing their claims to
waterholes, pastures and cattle herds. In due course the
Namas were transformed from a self sufficient, nomadic
pastoral people, living off huge herds of cattle and
organized on the basis of kinship relations, into an
impoverished, cattle raiding people, organized on the basis
of commando groups, and dependent on the Cape trade network.
The Afrikaners under the leadership of Jonker Afrikaner
entered into feudal alliances with Nama chiefs and
established themselves between the Swakop and IKhuiseb
rivers, so that they could have access to the vast resources
available in Hereroland. In the subsequent years the
Hereros were subjugated through sporadic but constant raids,
until their chiefs accepted the supremacy of the Oorlam

Afrikaner.

4. The Role of the Missionaries in Nineteenth Century
South West Africa
Missionaries were in great demand amongst the
Oorlam/Nama chiefs. In 1836, Jonker asked a British
traveller, James Alexander to organise a missionary for him.
In 1840, he welcomed two missionaries from the Wesleyan

Mission Society, Cook and Tindall, who were visiting

143

Windhoek and urgently requested a missionary. Finally in
1842, his wish was granted in the form of Carl Hugo Hahn.

Jonker, like most other chiefs, was led by practical
rather than pious motives. His hegemony depended on a
steady supply of guns, ammunition and horses from the Cape.
The missionary was vital in maintaining contact with traders
from the Cape. He attracted itinerant traders, who supplied
him and his family with their private needs. Thus the
commodities from the Cape and the trade routes were also
available to the chief of the missionary station.
Missionaries became a tool for political control in the
hands of the chiefs, since they secured their supply of
firearms from the Cape. Contradictory as this may appear,
the missionaries themselves were often the suppliers of
firearms. For them the end justified the means. They were
after all waging a war against sin, and if this called for
firearms, then it was in the cause of bringing the Gospel
and civilization to the heathen. As Dr. H. Vedder, a South
African "authority on native tribes," states, "Fire-arms
belong to the first civilized achievements of the Herero."8

Thus the wooing of missionaries began and mission
stations started to dot the landscape: Bethany, Berseba,
Gibeon, Rehoboth, Windhoek etc. Brigitte Lau observes that
by the middle of the nineteenth century, "Christianity had
become an integral part of social and political relations in

9

Namaland.” Missionaries were guarded jealously and the

144
spread of their influence to subordinate or rival chiefs,
like those of the Nama and later the Herero, was seen as a
threat by the Oorlam leaders, who wanted a monopoly over
them. Schmelen, for instance, was one of the missionaries
ousted from his mission station, Bethany in 1822, because he
started preaching to neighboring Nama groups.

Thus the missionaries, while regarded as a great asset,
were simultaneously held in control, leading to an ambiguous
relationship between the chief and the missionary. Hahn, for
example, was dependent on Jonker's protection. He was
allowed to venture into Hereroland and later open the first
mission there (in Otjikango) only after he had obtained
permission from Jonker. Jonker also supplied Hahn with
cattle, when food supplies had been exhausted. This
relationship was made more fragile, because the missionary,
as a spiritual leader, was also a rival to the authority of

the chief.

5. Missionaries: Propagators of German Culture

There is a characteristic ambivalence at the heart of
the missionary enterprise. On one hand, it levels all of
humanity to the status of sinners, who can, however, be
saved, since they are all children of God. This
incorporative orientation is at the same time undercut by
the hierarchical nature of the mission. Missionaries, like

Hahn saw themselves as leaders, guides, and parents of the

145
universal Christian family. They were members of the chosen
few appointed by God to spread his message among the
heathen.

They also saw themselves as a "Kulturvolk," as members
of a superior race and culture. Their culture was regarded
as the only possible culture for Christians. From the start
indigenous culture was evaluated negatively and every effort
was made to destroy it. The missionaries refused to
tolerate a wide variety of African social practices, which
they felt were un-Christian, particularly polygamy and
bridewealth. A true Christian life was impossible until the
social order of the African tribe was radically altered.10
Thus, missionaries were not only messengers of the Gospel
but also propagators of their own cultures. Spiritual
conversion implied a transformation of indigenous values,
characteristics and behavioral patterns, accompanied by the

transformation of the indigenous socio-economic order.

6. Establishing Order

The concept of civilization was closely connected with
the creation of an environment, which resembled a German
one. Instead of adapting to indigenous lifestyles, which
were most suited to the environment, missionaries in general
tried to implant their culture in Africa. This was not an
easy task. Hahn, the first missionary in Hereroland, had to

explore the territory, searching for a suitable spot with a

146
reliable source of water, for establishing a mission. Once
this was found, he had to build a house, followed by a
church, and a school, lay out gardens, and plant crops,
which he hoped would suffice as daily nourishment.

As Nicholas Thomas observes, the mission was not just
"a house in the bush," but a whole structure of institutions
which reorganized work and social life, creating order.11
The house, church, school and gardens came to symbolize
order or "civilization," i.e. German culture. "Order" also
meant to what extent nature had been subjugated and
controlled by man. Nature had been created in a state of
potentiality, waiting to be transformed through the
purposeful action of man. It had been given by God to man
for his use. Until it had been ploughed and developed, it
remained “das Unland."

Progress was measured according to the number of clay
houses, well-tended gardens or beds of corn a group had.
These cultural aspects were totally alien to the Herero
lifestyle. Hahn often notes this difference, which he
perceives as a lack of progress: "Den einzigen Fortschritt
in der Zivilisation kann man nur darin finden, dass mehr
Korn gebaut wird, sonst wird weder feste Wohnsitze noch
andere Spuren davon sichtbar" (613). On another occasion he
notes, "schlechte Garten ohne Ordnung" (617).

On the other hand while describing Mamre, a Moravian

mission, Hahn admires:

147

Die Kirche und Missionsgebfiude ... das grosse
Wohnhaus, Fremdenhaus, Laden, Schulmeisterhaus,
Posthaus ... Wasser- und Pferdemfihle, ....
majestatische Eichenanlage .... Die meisten der
Hauser waren niedlich von aussen und innen ... und
nur hin und wieder sah man noch einige
Schilfhfitten. (630)

Replace the "Missionsgebaude" with a "Rathaus," and erase
the "Schilfhfitten," and you could find yourself looking at a
town in Germany, even the oaks are not missing. Only the
indigenous "Schilfhfitten" spoil the picture for Hahn,12
who prefers a house constructed out of "Stampfbau" or clay,
describing it as "ein ... ziemlich gutes Hans" (78). Lau
explains this preference by pointing out that "mat houses
equalled barbarism and stone houses, built and controlled by
men, were the only "civilized" way of living" (73).

Although the indigenous form of shelter was more appropriate
to the existing environment and lifestyle, it is perceived,
like the Oriental custom of sitting on the floor, as a sign
of savagery and had to be eradicated.

The bourgeois obsession for order is also reflected in
Mamre: "Die Garten ... waren in sehr guter Ordnung und
enthielten ... Gemfise- und Fruchtbaume ... Die Rosen sind
fast in allen Hecken. Hier sieht man wirklich Christentum
und Zivilisation Hand in Hand" (631). Mamre has been
transformed by the civilizing influence of Christianity.

The African desert has been tamed by the Christian and a

Paradise has blossomed in its place. Gardens appear like a

148
leitmotif all through the diaries. Hahn seems obsessed with
them. A garden needs constant tending and symbolizes a
sedentary way of life in contrast to the nomadic way.
Settlements were of prime importance to the missionaries,
for in order to preach, they needed to collect a
congregation first. The members of the congregation had to
settle down in the mission station, where their activities
could be regulated and monitored. The Christian community
was seen as a conducive and indispensable environment for
the spiritual progress of the heathen.

As a result, Hahn does not recognize the indigenous
onganda (settlement) as part of a civilization existing
independently of Europe. But as Irle, Luttig and Malan have
shown, these settlements were carefully planned according to

13 Because this was a

local customs and lifestyles.
nomadic pastoral people, for whom cattle played a vital
role, the cattle enclosure was located in the center with
huts all around it in a circle. The otjizero (main hut
belonging to the principal wife of the chief) was the only
but which faced the sacred fire, which stood between the
cattle enclosure and the otjizero. The arrangement of the
village was not arbitrary, rather it reflected the values of
the people. But this was not seen as a culture specific to

a people living in a different environment. Instead, the

missionaries were adamant about building "proper" houses and

149
European styled towns, with the mission station in the
center.

The bid to christianize Africa and make it more
European is evident when one comes across names such as
Mamre, Rehoboth, Berseba and Oranjefluss,14 dotting the
landscape of Namibia. Hahn in fact called Windhoek, Barmen,
Otjikango, Neu Barmen, the Swakop river, the Rhein and while
passing by a mountain en route to Walfisch Bay, he decided
to name it Lievenberg in honor of Prince Carl von Lieven
(367). This typically colonial gesture is a linguistic
appropriation of the land, which denies the local people
their own culture and history, resulting in their
alienation.

The residents of mission stations were often isolated
from their own communities and found themselves in a world,
totally alien to them. As a result, they would frequently
desert the mission. This situation was aggravated everytime
there was a rumor of an impending raid from a rival tribe.
Thus the number of inhabitants constantly fluctuated,
causing Hahn to complain bitterly:

Ein grosses Hindernis der Schulwirksamkeit ist ...
das Umherziehen der Leute, dem jedoch der
Missionar sich oft entgegensetzen kann und muB,
wenn etwas Ordentliches und Bleibendes in der
Gemeinde geleistet werden soll... Man muss mit
allen Kraften dem alten Schlendrian
entgegenwirken; z.B. beim Kornsaen, Gartenmachen,
Ziehen auf die Station usw. (80)

150
Searching for grazing or water for cattle was not considered
work, but rather a sign of heathenism, which had to be
eradicated, whereas a "settled" existence was in accordance
with good christian behavior. As Pagden notes, the word
"civilization" is derived from "civitates" - life lived in
cities, i.e. settled communities, the source of civility or

15 While these settlements did benefit the Hereros

order.
greatly by providing protection during raids, medical care,
and imparting the basics of reading and writing, they also
made the indigenous people more dependent on the

missionaries.

7. WOrk: The Solution to all Evils

Another important aspect of missionary activity was
teaching the indigenous people to earn their living "by the
sweat of their brow." The missionary was also an
"Arbeitserzieher": Work would free the "heathens" from the
fetters of their "primitive" lifestyles and lead them to the
path of Christianity and civilization. Thus spiritual
instruction takes place not only through words or ora (i.e.
the Gospel) but also through deeds or labora (i.e. work).

Regardless of their culture-specific work (cattle-
raising, watering, hunting), the "indolent natives" were
made to "work" and become "useful" members of the community,
by supporting the daily needs of the mission. Among the

Hereros, however, only those who were dispossessed, like the

151
Ovatjimba, or the rich, who could afford servants to do
their work, could spend the time "learning to work."
This limited concept of work (labor) figures later in
the writings of another missionary, Irle, as

"Knlturarbeit."l6

Working the land (agriculture) or
improving the landscape was the only "proper" kind of work.
As Irle asks: "Wenn das Land fehlt, das bebaut werden kann,
was sollen die Schwarzen denn arbeiten?" (118). However,
when the land still did not yield the bounteous harvests,
the missionaries had hoped for, Irle begins to doubt this
understanding of work and concedes: "Ffir Viehzucht ist auch
das Land vor allem geeignet, nicht ffir Ackerbau; ware es
das, so wfirden auch die meisten Herero Ackerbauer sein"
(120).

But cattle raising was still not considered equal to
agriculture. Irle tries to attribute the inherent laziness
of the Hereros to their occupation. Had the land been
fertile and yielded good harvests, the Hereros would have
been hard working. Cattle-raising, on the other hand, at
which the Hereros excell, exerts a corrupting influence,
leading to their ultimate downfall: "Das stete Herumliegen
mit dem Vieh hat ihr sittliches Geffihl abgestumpft und bis
nahezu auf den Tiefpunkt gebracht" (59). Their labor which
is not considered as real labor, but as sloth is the cause

of their loose morality.

152

Von frfih auf hfiten die Knaben ... das Vieh, und
der standige Umgang damit pragt ihrem Gemfit seinen
besonderen Stempel auf. Da ist es, wo die
Unkeuschheit bei der Hererojugend geboren wird ...
Die Beschaftigung der Knaben mit dem Vieh
erfordert weder besondere kfirperliche noch
geistige Anstrengung. Es ist der Hauptsache nach
MfiBiggang. (Irle 100)

The persistence (bordering on mania) with which the
missionaries tried to civilize the Herero through
"Kulturarbeit" is illustrated by Irle, when he states: “Oft
genug haben wir sie buchstablich Steine zusammenschleppen
und wieder auseinanderstreuen lassen, nur um sie fiberhaupt
zu beschaftigen und an kfirperliche Arbeit zu gewfihnen"
(118). But there is a hint of desperation in this
statement, which reveals an unvoiced doubt about the
validity of his own convictions.

There was a sexual division of labour on the missionary
stations, in accordance to the assigned gender roles in
Europe, and legitimized by "natural" gender specific
characteristics. The man was the breadwinner and had access
to the public sphere, whereas the woman withdrew indoors and
devoted herself to the home and the family. Among the Nama
groups, however, the women were the main producers, while
the men hunted and raided cattle. According to Brigitte
Lau, who bases her evidence on the limited accounts left by

missionaries and travelers, women

153

controlled the key building materials, namely,
reeds; built and owned the reed houses; milked the
cattle and prepared the staple food, sour milk;
supervised the herds and herding ... produced all
vegetable food ... and ...bore and raised the new
generation. (68)

The capitalistic division of labor, which was alien in
Africa, was now imposed in toto on the Other, resulting in a
shift in indigenous gender roles. The men were made to sow
the seeds, plough the land, lay out gardens, and build
houses, whereas women had to occupy themselves with domestic
chores (for the missionary's wife), so that they could
fulfill the role of a good Christian housewife. Hahn notes
that his wife, Emma begins a needlework class for the women
(341). Such activities were seen as vital for the
development of the more virtuous characteristics attributed
to women.17 Irle discusses his wife's efforts in
educating the local girls, which he calls "die schwerste
Geduldsarbeit":

Solange die Kinder noch unter 12 Jahren waren,
ging alles gut. Das unbrauchbarste Geschfipf aber
ist und bleibt so ein erwachsenes, heiratslustiges
Hereromadchen. Bis sie an einen Mann gebunden
sind, sind sie unzuverléssig wie ein loser Bogen.
Doch Gottes Wort macht schlieBlich auch sie
bescheiden, fleiBig und wandelt sie um. Viele
unserer Madchen sind nachher tfichtige Hausfrauen
geworden. (296)

154
This ideology sees marriage and domesticity as indispensable
for the improvement of women's morality. The only role it
leaves open to women, is that of a housewife serving her
husband and family. Thus women, who had once been
producers, were now confined to the private sphere and
became dependant not only on the missionaries, but also on

their men.

8. The Domestication of Indigenous Women

Contrary to Brigitte Lau, who states that "women's
oppressed status most clearly manifests itself in the fact
that they are not mentioned" (72), I think that Hahn has
rather a lot to say about women. Women were, in fact,
primary targets for evangelisation, because they were
regarded as the corner stone of the home and family and thus
exerted a considerable amount of influence on their men and
children. If they could be converted, then they, in turn,
would convert others. But first they had to learn to behave
like Christian women and develop those characteristics which
their given roles of wife and mother demanded of them:
chaste, virtuous, and submissive.

As a wife, woman was responsible for making the house a
home through her ennobling presence. The home had to be
kept clean and orderly, conducive for raising a Christian
family. Hygiene was also emphasized. Hahn's description of

a hut in the "Heidendfirfchen" highlights the total neglect

155
of the home, the refuge of the family, characterized by
filth and disorder in contrast to the bourgeois ideal of the
home:

Der ganze Hausrat schien ans einigen Fellen und
ein paar schmutzigen Holzgefassen zu bestehen.

Der Eigentfimer der Hutte sass in einen grossen,
schmierigen Kaross gehfillt. Ein fast ganz
nacktes, mehr als schmutziges Madchen war gerade
damit beschéftigt, seine Beine mit roter Farbe und
Fett einzureiben, wahrend ein Kind sein Gesicht
schon greulich bemalt hatte. (91)

Like Hahn-Hahn, Hahn also perceives the lack of material
possessions as a sign of savagery. Clothes are replaced by
grease, paint and hides, if anything at all, and the variety
of European household goods is reduced to a few dirty wooden
vessels. Familial relationships, usually illustrated
through kinship terms, are not even mentioned here, as if
they cannot exist in such a neglected environment. The girl
is reduced to a slave helping the man to continue his
"savage" ways. The child has not been reprimanded for
painting his face and how can he know any better if, indeed,
his only role model is the savage himself. The mother is
conspicuously absent.

The role of mother as the "erste Erzieherin des
Menschen" and the central figure in the family was
considered of utmost importance. She was responsible for
raising her children as model Christians. This was achieved

by setting a good example, strict disciplinarian action as

156
well as maternal affection. The indigenous women were
criticized on all three accounts. Hahn relates an incident,
which he sarcastically claims, bears witness to "[die]
zartliche Mutterliebe einer Omuhererofrau":

Ihr einziger Sohn ... hatte sie geargert und sie
mit Steinen geworfen, ... sie ... warf ihn auf die
Erde, ...lfiste einen Riemen von ihrem Leibe, band
denselben um den Hals des Kindes und wfirgte ihn.
Das soll der allgemeine Gebrauch unter den Mfittern
sein. (341)

Maternal instincts were considered natural not only to
women, but also to female animals. Yet, the brutality
expressed in this description illustrates the Other as
wholly devoid of "natural" emotions. Both Hahn-Hahn and
Martins also refer to abortions as a common practice in
order to emphasize the depraved nature of the Other, which
rejects motherhood, the natural state for a woman.
Indigenous women did not provide the sort of role model
a Christian mother did for her children. The blame fell
squarely on the institution of polygamy. Polygamy in Africa
was closely related to women's productive value. It tends
to prevail in subsistence cultures, where women and
bachelors were the main producers. The acquisition of
several wives was thus a means of increasing the family's
labor force and consequently its wealth. The missionaries
condemned polygamy on moral grounds. It was against the law

of God, as revealed in Genesis. It degraded women into mere

157
sexual objects, and was the cause of their immoral behavior.
They became slaves of men and were forced to work, in
contrast to Christian women, who were considered equal
partners of their men, bound together in a spiritual union.
Polygamy prevented the refinement of woman's character,
which remained sunken in the morass of sin.

The gravity with which polygamy was viewed by the
missionaries is expressed through the metaphor of a siege in
the diary of Dr. Wangemann, a mission inspector for the
Berlin Mission Society:

Wo die Heiden noch ihren polygamischen Capitan
fiber sich haben, wo sie die Lobola ... noch nicht
weggeworfen haben - ... da ist das Heidenthum noch
mit einer eisernen Mauer umgeben, durch welche
alle Missions-Anstrengungen ... noch keine solche

Bresche gelegt haben, daB die Festung einnehmbar

geworden ware.18

As the tactical language demonstrates, the missionaries saw
themselves as soldiers, serving in the army of God, engaged
in a war against heathenism. Christianity in the non-
European world became the savior of oppressed women from the
brutality of their own men.

The Christian family was propagated as the only way of
combatting the tide of immorality and of emancipating women
from the chains of servitude. But until they have not been
uplifted by Christianity, these women continue to be
"geistig-dumpf," and "viehisch," concerned only with the

fulfillment of their carnal desires instead of setting a

158
good example for their children, who in Hahn's words are
exposed from the start to the sins of the flesh (1042).
Women's exposed bodies and unrestrained dances were
interpreted as a provocation, a sign of their promiscuity
and unbridled sensuality, which had to be controlled and
suppressed through the implementation of a strict code of
morality.

l9 .
on several occasions

Hahn reaches for his sjambok
to combat evils like illicit relationships between the
sexes, extra-marital affairs and insolence on the part of
women. For example, a man who had had an affair with a
married woman was made to pay a large sum to the woman's
husband, in accordance to local laws. Hahn objected to the
"freche Ehebrecherin" going scot free and decided to take
matters into his own hands: "ich besorgte ihr ... eine
Tracht Prfigel, die sie in ihrem Leben nicht vergessen wird"
(959). On another occasion, he reprimands his assistant,
Markus for flirting with Maria, the Nama interpreter, by
giving them both "einige derbe Hiebe" with his sjambok
(307). His view of Maria is clearly shaped by the figure of
Eve, leading Markus into temptation and eternal damnation.
Urieta, his maid, is, on the other hand the model convert.
She promises Hahn to remain chaste and renounces marriage
altogether, so that she can be baptized. (Christians were

not allowed to marry heathens). This is accomplished in

1858, at the cost of alienation from her family and the

159
denial of her identity. Renamed Johanna Maria, her
conditioning to the bourgeois ideal of the sexless,
"sittsam-zfichtig" woman was complete.

While Christian monogamous marriage freed the woman
from the traditional patriarchal structures of indigenous
society, it also denied her the economic independence she
had enjoyed before. Christian bourgeois ideology reduced
her now to a "Gattin, Hausfrau, Mutter," an occupation,
which she performed voluntarily, receiving no pay in return.
This domestication of women was ironically the price they

had to pay for their emancipation.

9. Christianity: The Road To Prosperity

Christianity also posed as and indeed often was the
liberator of the poor. But instead of tracing the reasons
for poverty to economic and social causes, the missionaries
saw religion as the main factor. Through the example of
Kamuzandu, Hahn illustrates that Christianity, i.e. moral
progress, and material progress go hand in hand. Once
Kamuzandu has accepted the teachings of the Bible, he
changes from "einer der liederlichsten, schmutzigsten und
faulsten" to "der einzige Reinliche, der Fleissigste und der
Wohlhabenste auf der Station" (585). This transformation is
reflected not only by his increased wealth in the form of

cattle and gardens, but in his dress:

160

er hat schon langst die heidnische Tracht
abgelegt. An Werktagen geht er in einem blauen
deutschen Kittel und Fellhose, nebst altem Hut ...
Am Sonntage ... zieht er eine alte Hose ... an und
trfigt eine rote, wollene Mfitze auf dem Kopf. Es
sieht ... ganz respektabel ans. (587)

Once he has been baptised, and given a German name, the
cultural transformation would be complete. Even after
conversion, however, Kamuzandu would not be an equal, for he
is dressed up in old hand-me-downs. Forsaking his own
cultural identity, he remains a puppet in the hands of his
benefactors.

The missionaries aimed at molding the indigenous people
to a certain behavioral pattern, which would make them
"decent," "diligent," obedient and god-fearing men and
women. The converts had to be instilled with values and
characteristics, which were considered to be hallmarks of
the German bourgeoisie. Anything which was strange or
different was a potential threat and had to be suppressed by

making it familiar, i.e. German.

10. Religion and Language

The missionaries did achieve a measure of success in
transforming the material culture of the Hereros within the
Christian settlements, as demonstrated by the appearance of
houses, clothes, soap, pots and pans, bread and other

European commodities. It was the spiritual domain, however,

161
where all their efforts met with frustration. Hahn often
despairs at the indifference shown by the Hereros to the
message of the Gospel, commenting:

Ffihlte mich heute wieder recht mutlos. Wenn man
so taglich die greuliche Versunkenheit der
Menschen und noch kein Zeichen zur Besserung sehen
muss, dann ist's zuweilen, als ob das Wort Gottes
in der Kehle stecken bliebe. Es ist, als [ob]
diese Leute verstockt und ffir alles Geistige
unfahig waren (959)

The linguistic barrier between the missionary and his

congregation was the main obstacle to conversion. Since
conversion relied on persuasion, the need to learn Herero
became imperative. The initial years were spent trying to
decipher the language. By 1847, Hahn was able to hold his
first sermon in Herero. Sermons were written first in
German, then translated into Herero and finally corrected in
collaboration with a local person and an interpreter, so as
to reduce the risk of solecisms. By 1849, Hahn had compiled
a primary set of vocabulary, followed by a Herero grammar in
1857 and a translation of Bible stories into Herero in 1861.
Thus the process of standardization, by which an oral
language is written down, had begun. An English-Herero
dictionary compiled by F.W. Kolbe was published in 1883,
followed in 1886 by a Herero-German dictionary compiled by
Brincker.20

However, as Irle reports, even after more than 20 years

in Hereroland, Hahn could not follow the conversation

162

between two Hereros, although the Hereros could understand
him (232). Regardless of this lack of fluency, Hahn is
still considered as a pioneer in the field of Herero
linguistics, because he was the first person to "decipher"
it. The word "decipher" like "discover" illustrates how
these languages have no place in human history until they
are exposed or unravelled by the European. As Hahn states:
"Es muss berficksichtigt werden, dass hier eine Sprache nicht
nur zu lernen, nein, zu ordnen, zu bilden ist, ...” (329).
The speakers of the language are thus rendered speechless.
The discourse erases the existing language so that it can be
restructured to suit the needs of the missionary.

The standardization of the language had far-reaching
consequences. As Rajmund Ohly points out, Herero became a
language for a special purpose and was molded to accommodate

21 Preaching typically focussed on

Christian concepts.
the themes of Creation and the Fall, the nature of sin and
the promise of salvation through Christ's atonement. The
major obstacles in translating the Bible were not the
grammar or the lexical items, but the cultural concepts,
which did not exist or which took on a different meaning in
the target culture. Hahn refers to the difficulty of
translating the concept of the devil: "Die Geschichte der
Verffihrung des ersten Menschenpaars war mir sehr schwer, da

die Omohereros (sic) keine Idee von einem bfisen Geist, oder

fiberhaupt von Geist haben" (221). Often these concepts had

163

to be created. The concept of sin, for example, a basic
tenet of Protestantism had to be instilled in the local
people, since conversion presupposes an acceptance of one's
sins and a fear that can only be relieved by divine
grace.22

In order to facilitate the understanding of Christian
principles, a process of "language engineering" (Ohly 12)
was begun, which coined new words, used existing words in a
new semantic field and introduced totally new concepts.
Since there was no word in Herero for "glauben", Hahn uses
the word "hfiren" instead. Similarly the word "Heiligkeit"
is replaced with the Herero word for "Reinheit or
abgesondert von Bfisen (Abgesondertsein)." The polysemous
word "ondjo" is used to denote the concept of "Schuld."
Later it was replaced by "oupikapike" or "Taugenichtsigkeit"
(Irle 232). These examples illustrate how Herero words were
used to express foreign concepts. In the course of time a
shift in the original meaning took place, erasing the
original semantic field of the word and replacing it with a
new christianized and German field.

According to Irle, the Herero language needed to be
cleansed and purified:

Worte und Begriffe wie Treue, Glaube, Hoffnung,
Gerechtigkeit, Keuschheit, Demut, Erlfisung,
Seligkeit ua. fehlten gfinzlich, éhnliche Begriffe
waren zum Teil vorhanden, aber in heidnisch
entstelltem Sinn. Es bednrfte daher erst einer

164

Reinigung und Umgestaltung der Sprache in
christlichem Geiste, um sie ffir die Verkfindigung
des Evangeliums brauchbar zu machen. (69)

This list of "anti-lexica" (Pagden) or terms which savages
did not have, is a common feature of travel writing, used to
illustrate the poverty and corruption of their cultures.
Herero was perceived as an impure language, which had to be
ennobled and filled with christian content (Irle 231). Thus
the language was forced into the conceptual grid of
Protestant German, in an attempt to convert its
speakers.23

In 1990, Namibia, like most decolonized countries, with
multiethnic populations decided to adopt the colonizer's
languages (Afrikaans and English), as official languages.
Whether this will be at the expense of their cultural
identity, remains to be seen. But as Stephen Greenblatt

says about the native Americans:

... reality for each society is constructed to a
significant degree out of the specific qualities
of its language and symbols. Discard the
particular words and you have discarded the
particular men. And so most of the peOple of the
New World will never speak to us. That
communication, with all that we might have

learned, is lost to us forever.24

165
11. The Infantilization of the Other

All travel accounts are constructions of the Other.
While the observations may be based on real encounters with
the Other, they are still filtered through dominant modes of
discourse and embedded in the context of the encounter.
Hahn's perceptions, for example, were influenced by several
factors: how dependent he was on the local population at the
given time, how much success he had had in evangelizing,
whether Jonker was cooperating with his plans or offering
resistance, etc. His diaries were also dispatched to and
read by the mission fathers in Barmen, on whom Hahn relied
for more funds and missionaries necessary for the
continuation of his work. This also influenced his
depiction of the local population as helpless children,
dependent on the missionaries for spiritual guidance.

Travel accounts abound with this image, partly because
it legitimized European ventures abroad. For example, the
seal of the Massachusetts Bay Co. depicts a native American
crying, "Come over and help us!" (Grfinder 177). Hahn often
mentions, how during his journey through Damaraland, he and
his companion, Rath were begged by the Gomaxa Damaras to
help them: "Sie sagten uns, sie seien dumm, ganz dumm, wir
mfissten daher zu ihnen kommen, um sie zu unterrichten und zu
lehren ..." (125). His desperate appeal to the mission
society is projected on to the Damaras, whose pleas

(significantly expressed through gestures) acquire a more

166
exaggerated and urgent quality: "Von allen Seiten strecken
die Stamme ihre Hande flehend zu uns aus. Oh, ihr deutschen
Brfider und Schwestern, kommt, kommt, helft uns! Das Netz ist
uns zu voll; es mfichte reissen!" (129). Hahn implores
Germans to become fishers of souls, crying out for
salvation.

Irle depicts the Herero mourning the departure of their
"teacher" Hahn, and their "mother", Emma Hahn, with the
words, "Wir sind Waisenkinder geworden. ... Wer wird uns nun
unsere Hosenknfipfe, wenn sie abbrechen, wieder annahen?“
(292). The expression "Hosenknfipfe annfihen" is explained by
Irle as "d.h. sie zu lieben". One wonders whether these
words were said in Herero and translated by Irle, because if
so, then from where did the imagery come? A more convincing
interpretation is that Irle is putting words in the mouth of
his characters, with the effect of rendering them as
dependent children in need of attention. The language of
the family is used to illustrate that evangelisation is a
work of love. While the image of the family points to
racial equality, it also stresses the hierarchy and order
within a family. The missionaries were like parents, there
to guide, admonish and teach their children, the heathen,
who had to respect, obey and learn from their elders.

The chiefs are represented as vain, greedy and naive
children, interested more in European novelties than in the

message of the Gospel. When Hahn goes to meet the chief of

167
the ”Rote Nation" and asks him whether he wants a missionary
for his people, Oaseb is wary at first, but after listening
to a service, he agrees to keep a missionary. Hahn remarks,
"Gleich darauf bat er mich um Kleidungsstficke ..." (116),
interpreting this request as an expression of the
acquisitive nature of the chief. The chief is not seen in
the same light as a prince in Europe, i.e. as the head of
his peOple. He does not command the same respect, because
despite his status he is first and foremost a heathen in the
eyes of the missionary. This episode provides an
interesting contrast to an entry made during Hahn's visit to
Riga, when he, as per custom, goes to pay his respect to the
princes von Lieven: "Uberreichte beiden Ffirsten ein paar
Kuriosa von Afrika" (739). No such tribute is paid to the
Damara chiefs. Nor is there any concern about obeying
corresponding local African customs. As Vedder points out,
it was "considered polite to ask for a gift, as the
entreating person appears as a pauper who regards the other
as a wealthy man” (194). Although Vedder is talking about
the Herero, this could well apply to the Nama too.

The fascination with European novelties, eg. the book,
beads, mirrors etc. forms an integral part of travel
literature. This device is used to demonstrate the
technical superiority of the European and the naivity of the
Other. While African objects are regarded as curiosities

(as they were and still are from the European perspective),

168
Hahn cannot see a reversal of the situation within the
African context. The old chief of the Gomaxa Damaras,
although moved by the teachings of Jesus, is as impressed
with the "Blechschlfissel," "Lauf des Gewehrs" the mirror and
the harmonica (104). These objects which are taken for
granted in Europe were indeed novelties in Africa, just like
the African objects were curiosities in Europe. But the
very fact that we use the adjective "European" with
"novelties" and "African" with "curiosities“ shows a certain
bias in our language. "Novelties" signifies the new and
modern, "curiosities" the old and antique. The fascination
with novelties is regarded as a superficial, temporary and
juvenile interest, more on an emotional level, whereas the
interest in curiosities is on an intellectual level. Hahn
contrasts these two attitudes by using the words "Kindische
Neugier" and "Wissbegier" (492). Whereas the latter is
appropriated as a European characteristic, the former is
attributed to the Other. Consequently, the Other remains
fascinated with the novelty of an object, but never wants to
delve deeper to find out why or how it works.

The method used to teach the Bible also illustrates the
relationship between missionaries and Hereros as that
between rational adults and children. Like children, the
Herero's mental skills still have to be developed. They can
only learn through repetition, because they lack the

cognitive abilities to think for themselves:

169

Unsere Predigten sind meistenteils in
katechetischer Form. Das Gesagte pragt sich so
besser ein, und ihre Aufmerksamkeit wird rege
erhalten. Wollte man zu diesen Heiden anders
sprechen als zu Kindern von etwa vier bis sechs
Jahren in einem christlichen Lande, dann ginge
alles in den Wind. (434)

These various characteristics: helpless, acquisitive
and naive contribute to the overall picture of the Other as
a child, a popular mode of colonial discourse. Whereas
during the Enlightenment this strategy had its roots in the
equation between the stages of evolution and the ages of
humankind, Hahn is influenced by the patriarchal nature of
his profession, in which the minister views his congregation
as his children,25 or as his herd. This is an inherently
unequal relationship between the bringer of the Gospel and
the recipients, whose souls need to be saved from eternal
damnation. The inequality is further increased through the
system of confessions, when the convert has to reveal his or
her sins to the minister.

The missionary was a father figure, surrounded by
children, who had to be taught and disciplined, as stated in
the Bible: "Ihr Vater, ziehet eure Kinder auf in der Zucht
und Vermahnung" (227). Discipline was inculcated by
establishing and adhering to a daily routine. It was also
implemented through the use of the Sjambok. On the third of
February 1846 Hahn threatens his congregation with the

following words: "Seht, da liegt der Sjambok. Ihr wollt

170
weder hfiren noch Gottes Wort behalten, ... Jetzt sollt ihr
ffihlen, wenn ihr nun nicht aufpasst" (299). Knowing that he
would be criticized in Europe for introducing corporal
punishment in the service, he is quick to defend his actions
in an entry under the heading:

Sjambok und Theorie des Gebrauches: ... ich [will]
lieber barbarisch ihnen Gottes Wort einbleuen, als
dass sie wie Stock und Stein dasitzen und nichts
wissen. Sie werden's mir in der Ewigkeit nicht
danken, wenn ich mit ihnen recht <zivil> umgehe.
(298)

The need to justify his actions through the elaboration of a
theory reveals the problematic position of the missionaries.
On the one hand they were figures of authority vis-a-vis the
indigenous people, but at the same time they were tools in
the hands of their mission societies, which could undermine
their authority.

Hahn's sentiments are echoed by Dr. Wangemann in South
Africa, who while comparing the psychology of the Khoisan
people with that of children, claims:

den Herrn Jesum als Kfinig mit dem Scepter
bekleidet sein zu lassen, das verstehen sie nicht;
will man ihnen die kfinigliche Wfirde deutlich
machen, so mfiBte man etwa die Ochsenpeitsche als
Scepter darstellen. (168)

The language of force is the only language they understand.
These comments clearly illustrate the paternalistic attitude

of the missionary/father/colonizer towards the indigenous

171
people, who need to be christianized/disciplined/civilized
for their own good and should therefore be grateful for the

barbaric treatment meted out to them.

12. The Discourse of Savagery

Missionary discourse must emphasize the savagery of the
heathen, in order to justify the need for a mission, but at
the same time it must show the essential humanity of the
people to be evangelized, for if they are depicted as
quintessentially savage, then the project of evangelisation
becomes meaningless. Thus there is a necessary ambivalence
to missionary discourse (Thomas 374).

The Hereros are constructed as unnatural, and even
perverted. As demonstrated in Chapter II, descriptions of
the Other typically consist of an enumeration of traits
which are the antithesis of the moral values of the
bourgeoisie: love, tenderness, modesty, shame, fidelity,
obedience, diligence etc. Hahn, however, deprives the
Hereros of even the baser feelings, with which the savage is
often associated: "Ein Omuherero ist fast ohne Geffihl. Er
kennt weder Liebe noch Hass, noch Mitleiden, Erbarmen, noch
Rache. Sie sind die personfizierte Leichtsinnigkeit,
Herzlosigkeit, ohne allen tieferen Gehalt" (592). Hahn
finds every gesture and expression of theirs, "affektiert"

26

and "verstellt." Even the funeral of a child is dubbed

172

a "Karikaturtrauer" proving that they are incapable of even
the most fundamental and natural feeling of sadness (426).

On the one hand this construction of the Hereros is an
attack on the eighteenth century discourse of the noble
savage, who was seen as a "Naturkind," and praised for his
innate goodness and uncorrupted innocence. Hahn refers
sarcastically to Rousseau's noble savage several times:
"Ja, ihr Lieben, wir haben hier nicht mit lieben
Heidenbrfidern, sondern mit Monstern von Bfisheit zu tun"
(337). "In solchen noch den Menschen zu erkennen, das halt
schwer. Das sind diese liebenswfirdigen Kinder der Natur"
(506). Of course, the idea of an existing "unschuldige
Naturstand," a prelapsarian idyll would go against the
doctrines of Christianity, with its emphasis on the concept
of sin, the Fall, and Christ's crucification.

On the other hand, Hahn's severe judgement of the
Hereros is influenced by the fact that the Hereros remain
unmoved by the story of the Bible:

Es ist darum auch, dass sie ohne Interesse den
biblischen Geschichten Jahr ffir Jahr zuhfiren und
dass ffir ganz natfirliche Gemfiter selbst rfihrenden
Geschichten von der Geburt, Leiden, Sterben und
Auferstehung unseres Heilandes ffir sie ... viel
gleichgfiltiger sind, wie wenn man ihnen etwa ...
den Tod eines Hundes beschriebe. (593)

This indifference on the part of the Hereros to the trials
of Christ is interpreted as an absence of feelings, a proof

of their inhuman and brutish nature, rather than as a result

173
of Hahn's poor grasp of the Herero language, the lack of
good interpreters and the irrelevance of his interpretation
of the Bible to the Hereros's daily lives.

The unnatural aspect of Herero life is further
emphasized by describing the depravity of the Hereros.
Besides discussing the moral corruption of the adults, which
would not be unheard of amongst Europeans, Hahn targets the
children. The Hereros are born in sin and give evidence of
this from the start: "Die ersten Worte, welche ihre Kinder
lallen lernen, sind Ausdrficke, wie man sie bei den
schmutzigsten, verworfensten Menschen in Europa hfirt“ (381).
While setting up a parallel between the Hereros and the
European lower classes, Hahn also appeals to the bourgeois
sanctity of family: infants usually say "dada" first or
other such familial terms. Terms of affection are thus
contrasted with words (which Hahn does not and probably
cannot specify) associated with filth or swear words in
order to highlight the baseness of familial relationships in
the Other.

In a seemingly innocent anecdote, Hahn again emphasizes
the perversion of Herero children in contrast to European
children: "Ein Kind, dessen Bauch wie zum Zerplatzen voll
aussah, fragte ich, was es gegessen [habe]. "Orukutu," sagte
es ganz nnbefangen. Orukutu ist die Nachgeburt! Eine unserer
Kfihe hatte gekalbt" (383). While European children satisfy

their oral desires by eating sugar,27 Herero children

174
show their animalistic nature by eating the afterbirth. The
following excerpt, also concentrates on the inhuman eating
habits of children:

Ich habe haufig gesehen, dass kleine Kinder, die
noch nicht sprechen konnten, rohes ... Fleisch
verschlangen, und das nicht aus besonderem Hunger,
sondern aus Lust, wahrend die Mfitter es zusahen
und sich darfiber freuten. Welchen Einfluss das
auf sie ausfibt, brauche ich nicht zu erklfiren, es
liegt zu nahe. Gibt man doch selbst Hunden nicht
gerne rohes Fleisch, weil sie dadurch wfitend
werden. (325)

The use of the verb "verschlingen" instead of "essen" to
express the ferocious manner of eating and the emphasis on
"rohes Fleisch" point to the cannibalistic nature of the
Herero children. Since they cannot speak as yet, they are
little better than animals. Like the previous anecdote
about the children eating the afterbirth. this excerpt also
deals with immediate and spontaneous gratification of oral
desires: the children devour the raw meat not out of hunger
but out of an uncontrolled urge to satisfy their carnal
desire ("Lust"). The development of self-control and
restraint through delayed gratification was one of the main
goals of bourgeois pedagogy and socialization. Here,
however, no disciplinarian action is taken against the
children who transgress the boundaries of socially accepted
behavior. The father, the main figure of authority is

absent. The mother, instead of punishing her child, looks

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on indulgently, thereby encouraging him to continue his
bestial habits.

Earlier Hahn was at pains to show the lack of maternal
affection among Herero women who he claimed strangle their
children (341). Now the hierarchy between mother and child
is reversed, and it is the child who acquires the aggressive
qualities previously attributed to the mother. Although not
explicitly stated by Hahn, the parallel he draws between a
wild (wfitend) dog and the greedy/sexually excited child
conjures the image of the child attacking his mother and
points to an incestuous relationship.28 The orgiastic
overtones of the description illustrating the unrestrained
gratification of oral desires serve as a substitute for more
overt references to another form of transgression: incest.

The parallel between Hereros and animals is made
several times: "Sie fressen wie die Wfilfe ..." (305) and
"Wie wilde Tiere zerrissen auch sie mit ihren Zahnen das
Fleisch" (506). Hahn is both repelled and fascinated by the
animal-like appetites of the Hereros and even suggests that
it would be worth the trouble to dissect a Herero, if just
to see the stomach, which must be a monstrosity, and like
the ostrich, capable of digesting anything: "Fleisch, das
... bereits in Féulnis fibergegangen ist und vor dessen
Gestank wir laufen mfissen, essen sie, wie nnr ein Gourmand

die schfinste Pastete verzehren kann" (305).

176
Hahn, like Martins, carries out a textual dissection of
the Other's anatomy. But if Martins was in awe of the
oversized sexual organs of the Other, Hahn concentrates on
the digestive organs:

Der Bau des Kopfes der Ovaherero ... ist mir sehr
bemerkenswert. VerhaltnismaBig ist die Hirnschale
sehr klein, sowohl der Hinterkopf als Vorkopf,
jedoch breit von Ohr zu Ohr und schmal von der
Stirn zu dem Hinterkopfe und die Stirn selbst
besonders zurfickliegend. Dagegen treten ... die
Essorgane stark hervor. (324)

And like Martins, Hahn finds the same answers using the
compensatory theory, whereby the lack of rational faculties
(a human characteristic) is made up by a well-developed
digestive system (a bestial characteristic):

Ihr Denkvermfigen, dessen Sitz doch hauptsachlich
im Gehirne sitzt, ist gering, dagegen ihre
Esslust, ja, tierische Essbegierde, gross, darum
alle Organe, die damit verbunden stehen, sehr ...
fiberbildet und fast tierisch [sind]. (325)

Martins shifts the unnatural dimensions to the sexual
organs, discussing them in decidedly botanic terms, but
Hahn, probably because of the taboos of his profession, uses
the digestive organs and oral desires as a substitute for
the sexual functions, as indicated by the words, "Begierde"
and "Lust". Both, however, focus on the carnal desires of
the Other in direct contrast to the rational faculties of
the European. Hahn states, he is confident that with the

civilizing influence of Christianity, the "proper"

177
relationship between the two parts, head and digestive
organs, will gradually be restored (325). The Hereros will
be elevated to the status of human beings.

As already discussed, the physiognomy of a person was
considered a reflection of the person's character.
Contradicting Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828), the founder of
phrenology, who believed that the shape of the skull
determined the individual's character, Hahn held the opinion
that the character molded the form, (325) and so could be
changed. This opinion was necessary in order to justify the
missionary enterprise, for if Gall was proved right then all
Hahn's efforts would be futile, since he would then be
trying to alter nature. On several occasions, Hahn draws
conclusions about the character of the indigenous people
based on their physiognomy. For example, when he meets the
Ovambo women for the first time, he observes, "... alle ...
trugen das Geprage der Wollust im Gesicht ..." (1042). The
Ovambo chief, Nangolo is judged similarly, "Habsucht und
Geiz sind auch ziemlich deutlich in seinen Zfigen ausgepragt"
(1054). The Herero in Otjimbingwe cannot hide their sins
from Hahn's penetrating eyes either, as he notes: "...ihre
Gesichter ... [legen] unwidersprechliches Zeugnis von ihren
Fleischessfinden ab" (1123). Physiognomy is used to show the
savagery of the indigenous people, but it is seen as
something alterable, which can be changed through

Christianity.

178
Since the individual type was taken as representative
for the race, Hahn also does not restrict this method to
individuals, but extends it to include a whole race, here
the Khoisan people:

... ich glaube annehmen zu dfirfen, dass im
allgemeinen, ein ganzes Volk genommen, die aussere
Erscheinung ein Abdruck der geistigen Tatigkeiten
und Eigenschaften ist. Unter allen Vfilkern der
Erde stehen wohl die Hottentottenstamme auf der
niedrigsten Stufe kfirperlicher Schfinheit ... und,
so denke ich auch in geistiger Beziehung
(Entwicklung) ... eine der bfisartigsten Stufen
einnehmen. (660)

What emerges is a more or less homogenous picture of the
Other. As Hahn says himself, "Es scheint, dass das
Heidentum ...fiberall dasselbe ist" (201). All differences
between non-Christians are erased. But when Hahn sees the
Hereros as individuals, he manages to step out of the
conceptual prison of stereotypes. For example, Omuimwouye's
wife mourning for her dead son is described as a heart
breaking sight (406), yet when Hahn generalizes about the
Herero, he falls back to the discourse of the Other, calling
the funerals a "Karikaturtrauer" (426). Kavekui (384) may
eat decently, but the Hereros eat like wild animals.
Kahitjene may be moved by the the teachings of the Bible,
but the Hereros are desensitized to all that is pure and
noble. This ambivalence is characteristic of evangelical

discourse, because although it emphasizes savagery, it also

179
leaves the possibility of conversion open, by showing the

humanity of individual cases.

13. The Undoing of Missionary Discourse

In the beginning, the construction of the Other as the
essence of evil provided Hahn with the opportunity to
illustrate the neccessity of a mission. However, after many
years of futile effort, Hahn begins to doubt whether the
Hereros can be saved:

Manchmal ... ffirchte ich, dass unser Predigen ganz
fiber die Kfipfe der Eingeborenen geht, und dass sie
es nicht fassen kfinnen, ... des niedrigen
intellektuellen Standpunktes der Wilden wegen. ...
Sie haben kein Organ ffir hfihere Begriffe, weil
ihnen Zivilisation ganz und gar fehlt.
Zivilisation, ... bedingt notwendig auch eine
Kultur des Geistes, geistige Anregung,
Denkvermfigen. ... Geschichte fehlt ihnen ganz,
selbst Sagen, Anekdoten, scheint's besitzen sie
nicht. Bei so beschranktem Gesichtskreise,
ganzlichem Mangel ausserer Anregung, téglichem
Kampf, um auf erbarmliche ... Weise ihr Leben zu
fristen ..., kann man sich kaum wundern, dass sie
im eigentliche Sinne stumpf sind, ... Kfinnen diese
Leute auf der gegenwértigen Stufe geistiger
Versunkenheit das Evangelium annehmen? (928-29)

He attributes the failure of the mission to the low level of
intellectual development and primitive lifestyle of the
Hereros. They are perceived as culturally unformed, a

people without a history. Even though Hahn narrates several

180
Herero legends in which he finds similarities with Biblical
motives, eg. the tree of knowledge (503), and the flood
(968), he contradicts himself here by denying the Hereros
these legends, in order to illustrate their lack of culture.
But this extract undermines missionary discourse, which
believes in universal humanity and regards all people as
marked for salvation. The failure of the mission raises
doubts about the universality of Christianity, since, as
Hahn believes, the teachings of Christ are not applicable to
people at this level of intellectual development.

Similarly he condemns the Khoisan as "nicht
zivilisationsfahig," because they had been migrating to the
North, away from the European settlements. Although Hahn
acknowledges that this migration is a consequence of Dutch
farmers advancing further north, thus displacing the
Khoisan, he does not attach much significance to it.

Instead he shifts the blame from the settlers to the Khoisan
themselves:

Der [Hebel] ist in ihnen zu suchen, und ist
wahrscheinlich eine natfirliche, ihnen selbst nicht
zum Bewusstsein gekommene Scheu vor der
Zivilisation, die sie abstfisst, nicht anzieht. ...
Es ist ein dunkles Geffihl, dass sie nicht
zivilisationsfahig sind. Die Kultur zertritt sie,
aber veredelt sie nicht. Sie fliehen deshalb vor
ihr. Das ist ihr letztes Heil; aber entfliehen
werden sie dennoch ihrem Schicksale nicht. (1106)

181
Hahn sees this aversion to civilization as "ein natfirlicher
Instinkt," of which the Khoisan (die Gelben) themselves are
not aware. They cannot be civilized, because they are "kein
Kulturvolk." Like the Amerindians (die roten Nationen),
they are crushed instead of being uplifted by civilization.
However, the people of the West Indies, Sierra Leone and
Liberia (die Schwarzen) do have a future in the family of
humankind: "Sie scheuen nicht das Licht der Zivilisation,
sondern sie suchen es." The Other, depending on his color,
can either embrace civilization and be ennobled (veredelt)
by it or he can shun civilization, and be devoured
(verschlungen) by it. The choices boil down to assimilation
or extinction. The latter course is conveniently described
by Hahn as "ein geheimnisvoller, sicher aber gerechter Weg
Gottes." Missionary discourse, which leaves the doors for
conversion open to all is now replaced by a more selective,
color-coded, racial discourse.

The conflicts between the Oorlam Afrikaners and their
rivals for the hegemony over Hereroland proved to be a
stumbling block in the path of evangelisation. Repeated
raids disrupted life in the mission stations, scattering the
residents, who reverted to their "heathen" ways. According
to Hahn a European government was required to discipline the
Namas and to create order in the land, for the Africans on

their own were incapable of helping themselves (1105, 1120).

182
Quoting Eyth, Hahn finds climatic factors to explain this
inability:
Die afrikanische Sonne ... konnte nur einen
Schwarzen erzeugen, in welchem die Regsamkeit des

denkenden, ruhig schaffenden Geistes erstickt ist,

wahrend die Flamme der wildesten Leidenschaften im

Herzen fortbrennt. Bevor er von Aussen veredelt
wird, kann dieser Neger nicht aufhfiren, entweder

ein Menschenfresser (Sklavenjager) oder ein Sklave

zu sein. Es gibt ffir ihn nirgendwo eine
vernfinftige Vermittlung unvernfinftiger Gegensfitze
(1105).

The degeneration of Africans is naturalized by climatic
factors and seen as something inherent, that can only be
counteracted by external/imperial forces and thus justify
the establishment of colonial rule. Evangelisation could
not be achieved by the messengers of the Gospel alone, but
required colonial intervention.

With the establishment of colonial rule in 1884, the
fate of the Hereros was sealed. The rebellion of 1904 was
crushed brutally under the leadership of von Trotha. The
Herero population was reduced by eighty percent and the
remaining twenty percent were herded into homelands or
"concentration camps" as they were known then (Vedder 161).

Irle attests to the active role played by the missionaries

in paving the way for the colonization of South West Africa:

Die Herero waren im Laufe der Zeit vfillig andere
Menschen geworden. Anstelle ihrer frfiheren
Nacktheit war bei vielen gesittete Bekleidung

183

getreten, aus ihrer Zerissenheit und Zerstreutheit
waren feste Niederlassungen, Dfirfer geworden. Die
frfihere Bedfirfnislosigkeit hatte einer Menge neuer
Bedfirfnisse Platz gemacht. Die Herero hatten in
jeder Beziehung, in geistig-sittlicher wie in
kultureller ... sich umgewandelt ... es ware wohl
nie zu einer deutschen Ansiedlung ohne die
voraufgegangene Missionsarbeit gekommen. (166)

Irle uses the before-and-after narrative of conversion,
which contrasts former savagery with a subsequently
civilized state to prove the success of the mission in
bringing about this transformation. Irle is correct in so
far as the mission gig lead to colonization, but it was
requested, because of the failure, rather than the success
of the mission. If the missionaries had in fact been this
successful, why was colonial intervention regarded as
necessary? Why was there an uprising on the part of the
Hereros? As Lau points out the Hereros resisted this
cultural and social transformation. They did not wish to
trade their cattle against industrially manufactured goods.
They retained their kinship-oriented pastoral forms of
social organization (145). Colonial intervention was
necessary to break this resistance. Irle thus disguises the
nature of the link between colonialism and evangelisation.
He belies the historical fact, that this transformation was
brought about not by missionary activity, but enforced by
military action, resulting in the genocide of the Hereros.

As demonstrated in this chapter, the missionary played

 

184
a variety of roles. Besides spreading the message of the
Gospel, he was a propagator of his national culture.
Conversion was not restricted to only the spiritual domain,
but implied the adoption of certain behavioral patterns,
characteristics and values, which were considered German.
It also implied the substitution of the existing indigenous
socio-economic (dis)order with a more familiar, German
order. While the former was considered as barbarous, the
latter was upheld as the only environment suited to a
Christian life. Missionary discourse is a narrative of
conversion, contrasting former savagery with the subsequent
elevated state of Christianity. Savagery was seen as a
temporary condition, contingent on heathenism, and not as an
innate trait.

The mission station, with the missionary as its focal
point was indicative of the new order, on which the existing
system had to be remodelled. The nomadic pastoral lifestyle
was seen as a sign of savagery, which had to be eradicated
and replaced by settlements, where the missionary could keep
a watchful eye on the residents, monitor their activities
and make them work for their living. Cattle raising was
also considered a sign of heathenism, and had to be
substituted by agriculture. The residents of the mission
station were expected to adhere to the gender roles assigned
to men and women in Europe, leading to a shift in indigenous

gender roles: men became the breadwinners, the women

185
occupied themselves with domestic chores and the family.
Preaching required a transformation of language, since
Herero was considered an impure language, which needed to be
ennobled and christianized. The discourse dismantles
indigenous social structures piece by piece and replaces
them with German models.

The missionary also saw himself as father,
disciplinarian and teacher. Consequently, the Other is
constructed as a helpless and dependent child, who needs to
be rescued from his savagery and socialized in a Christian
environment. The infantilization and savagery of the Other
justified the existence of the mission in the eyes of its
sponsors in Germany.

Despite these various figures of authority that the
missionary embodied, he nevertheless occupied an extremely
precarious position. A stranger amongst people, whose
lifestyle was totally incompatible with his own, he was
expected to perform a miracle with a Bible in nis hands.
Hahn criticizes the curriculum in the seminary which does
not equip the missionaries with the skills required to
survive in a foreign culture (329). Threatened by raids,
illness, wild animals and discouraged by the lack of
success, Hahn indulges in moments of despair, which expose
his doubts regarding the feasibility of the mission. A tool

in the hands of both the chiefs and the mission society, his

186
authority could be undermined from either side if he did not
toe the line.

Ultimately the discourse undoes itself due to the
failure of the mission. Hahn's construction of the Other as
perverted and degenerate leaves little hope for conversion,
resulting in a reevaluation of his own beliefs. Missionary
discourse is undermined by a more exclusionary, racial
discourse. The success of evangelisation is made dependent
on the support of colonization. Thus did the flag follow

the cross.

CONCLUSION

This dissertation demonstrates how language in
Nineteenth Century German travel writing produces knowledge
about non-European cultures and peoples. Travel writing in
its broadest sense is writing about the contact zone. I
have analyzed three specific models of contact, which were
more common in the German context: scientific-exploratory
writing, tourist-leisure writing and missionary writing.

Most literary criticism on German travel writing
emphasizes the academic neutrality of German travelers,
claiming that they did not travel for economic and political
motives but were driven by the desire for knowledge. I, on
the other hand, have analyzed this body of writing in the
context of colonial discourse. Definitions of colonial
discourse normally discuss it in terms of the colonial
situation where writing serves the purpose of managing
colonial relationships and justifying conquest and
subjugation. However, Germany was not a colonial power
during the period under investigation. These writings
nevertheless reveal unexpected similarities with writings
stemming from a colonial situation. Like colonial accounts,
they are also a form of cultural domination, in that they
establish an intellectual authority over the other culture
and have the power to define, interpret and represent these

cultures for a European audience. This is achieved through

187

188

the demarcation of identity and difference, i.e. by
constructing a binary opposition between the Self and its
Other, where the self occupies the positive pole and the
Other is designated the negative pole. At the same time,
this relationship is not a stable one but is constantly
threatened by the collapse of established boundaries. In
each model of contact I show how the construction of the
Other takes place through disciplinary procedures, types of
writing and imagery. I also show how travel writing is not
composed of a single, homogenous and totalizing discourse,
but is filled with inconsistancies, ambiguities and clashing
discourses.

The process of Othering can be seen at work in even
supposedly neutral "anti-conquest" writing, such as Reise in

Brasilien by the naturalist, C. F. Ph. Martins. This

 

scientific journal reflects the post-Linnaean "squared and
spatialized" development of natural history, which was
limited to a rigid classificatory system and devoted to the
detailed description of organs and elements of plants.
Humans, like different species of plants and animals, are
identified, classified and catalogued. They are extracted
from their indigenous contexts and assimilated into European
paradigms of knowledge. Local knowledge is disregarded.

The procedures of nominating, classifying and arranging the

visible creates "order" amidst the "chaos of nature,"

189
pushing a whole "teratology of knowledge" out of its domain,
and creating a hierarchy of knowledge.

The microscopic vision of the naturalist is directed on
human beings too, resulting in detailed desriptions of the
anatomy. Body parts are textually dismembered from the
whole and scrutinized, like specimens that have been pinned
down and exposed to the gaze of the European eye.
Indigenous people are not regarded as cultural beings, but
as mere features and appendages. They are not described as
interlocuters, who provide travelers with valuable
information, transport and labor, but as discrete entities
of scientific enquiry.

The systematization and ordering of nature resulted in
a hierarchy of fixed species which included human
variations. Humans were ranked according to their racial
physiognomy, which in turn was linked to aesthetic
conventions and moral character.

The discourse erases the human world and produces
subsistence habitats as empty landscapes, waiting to be
developed and transformed into sites of industry and human
enterprise. The human world, if taken into consideration,
is seen in terms of categories and institutions used by the
bourgeoisie to define themselves, e.g. work ethics,
marriage, family, education, morals, etc. The Other is
defined either in opposition to the European as mainly

negative examples or in terms of absences and lacks.

190
In contrast to the rational and civilized European, the
Other is constructed as bestial. The Amerindians are denied
individuality and reduced to "hordes," while the Black is
attributed with a primitive sexuality.

The discourse does not create a homogenous Other. In
contrast to the sexually inexhaustible Black, the beardless
Indian is deprived of virility. While the overriding
gesture is the same, in that it constructs the Other as
inferior, the specific instances are different. These
different units of the Other illustrate how scientific
discourse was mediated by popular stereotypes and
influential debates like the querelle d' Amérique.

Whereas scientific discourse is characterized by an
impersonal style which endows it with an appearance of
objectivity, my second paradigm, tourist-leisure writing was
judged according to the degree of personality displayed by
the author. These writings were seen as personal
impressions of the country and encouraged the use of
fantasy.

In Orientalische Briefe by Ida Hahn-Hahn, time is used

 

as a category for analysis. The first model reduces the
Orient to a remnant of the past; a civilization which after
having reached its zenith, faded away leaving behind ruins
as records of the passage of time. The Orient served as a
site where Europe could search for its origins and for an

answer to its present predicament. But instead of Europe

191
being regenerated by the Orient, the project of archeology
turns Europe into the resurrector of the Orient by
rediscovering ruins, reconstructing a lost history, and
lifting it from obscurity. The indigenous peOple are
paradoxically cut off from their past. They are not seen as
historical agents who have living continuities with the past
and historically based claims on the present. Archeology
appropriates the past, denying the indigenous peOple a
historical consciousness and a self-knowledge. They are
silenced and disempowered and can now be controlled and
subjugated.

The second model dehistoricizes the Orient and
constructs it as a static, timeless and motionless tableau,
a stage with biblical actors before a European audience.

The imagery constructs the Occident as the active male, the
creator and life-giving power which articulates the passive
and dormant Orient, suffusing it with a surrogate life.

The last model constructs the Orient as a civilization
caught in the irreversible process of decline. Using
metaphers of darkness and disease, the discourse produces
the Turk as a figure enslaved by his decadent lifestyle,
driven to living in a dream world, a state of unconscious
delirium.

The discourse unveils the Orient, exposing the dismal
reality behind the facade of grandeur and debunking existing

myths of the Orient as a site of haunting landscapes,

192
romance, and intoxicating experiences. The Orient is not
what the word suggests: a shining, bright, dazzling source
of light, but diseased like the sultan, a scaffold like
Constantinople from a far, behind which all is chaos and
disorder.

So long as the observer's perspective from the
"commanding prospect" allows the eye to impose order over
the visual turmoil, the Orient remains enchanting, but as
soon as the view defies representation it disorients the
observer and is portrayed as a site of confusion and chaos,
crying out for the restoration of order.

The harem and polygamy are used to illustrate the
advancement of European society and the backwardness and
degeneration of Oriental ways. In contrast to Oriental
discourse, the harem is no longer an eroticized space, where
sexual fantasies can be played out. Rather, Hahn-Hahn makes
it a symbol of intellectual stagnation, boredom and
confinement. Sexual fantasies are projected onto the
Bedouins instead, who become the objects of both aesthetic
and erotic desire. Thus, she remains within the model of
Orientalism, which constructs the Orient as an exotic
tableau jouissance, but displaces her desire onto the
Bedouins.

Whereas the Bedouins are a source of pleasure, the
slaves are a source of disgust and fear. The sight of the

slaves brings out suppressed anxieties about the boundaries

193
between the races and about the very notion of humanity.
The initial moment of non-recognition turns the slaves into
sexless monstrosities. But the boundaries between Self and
Other collapse, when Hahn-Hahn acknowledges what she has so
far suppressed - that she is kin with them. In an attempt
to reestablish these boundaries, Hahn-Hahn reduces the
slaves to "une femelle" i.e. to their biological sex, as
opposed to "ein Weib." She reconstructs a hierarchy by
comparing them to such paragons of beauty and intelligence
as Sappho, Aspasia, and Maria Stuart. This gesture reflects
the ambivalence about the relationship between Self and
Other and about the concept of humanity itself, an
ambivalence which is expressed again in Hahn-Hahn's disgust
of the Orientals' four-legged habits, crouching on their
haunches like apes.

These letters are filled with ambiguities, beginning
with Hahn-Hahn's reason for being in the Orient. Her
journey was not sanctioned by the state or the church, as in
the case of Martins and Hahn, but was undertaken
voluntarily. She is not motivated by any clear-cut goals.
Although she states several times, that she has come to
restore her faith in the future and see a new beginning for
Europe, she seems to be driven more by the urge for self-
exploration and self-enrichment.

This ambivalence continues in the differential

treatment of the Bedouins, Egyptians, and Turks. The Turks

194
are criticized for their indifference to European goods, the
absence of which reflects their mental impoverishment and
reduces them to the level of the ground. The Bedouins, on
the other hand, are idealized for their simple, uncorrupted
lifestyle. Hahn-Hahn disapproves of European influences in
Egypt. She criticizes the ruler, Ali, for hiring French
tutors to educate his sons and for following the path of
industrialization instead of searching for answers in the
Orient itself. Yet, she promotes the Protestant work ethic
and European habits of consumption, using the language of
the civilizing mission to invent the Orient as backward and
neglected thereby legitimizing colonial intervention.

My third paradigm, evangelical discourse, is
essentially a narrative of conversion, which contrasts
former savagery with a subsequent elevated state of
Christianity. Because the mission was dependent on sponsors
in Germany for the continuation of its work, it had to
persuade the readers at home, that it was needed urgently.
As a result the discourse emphasizes the savagery of the
people, but also signals their essential humanity, showing
that missionary activity was not a futile endeavour. To
this end it constructs the Other as helpless children, who
are in need of guidance and dependent on the mission.

Conversion was not restricted to the spiritual domain
but implied the adoption of certain values and

characteristics which were considered hallmarks of the

195
German bourgeoisie. This could not be achieved under the
existing conditions. The discourse therefore dismantles
indigenous socio-economic structures, which were interpreted
as signs of "heathenism" and had to be eradicated, and
replaces them with German models, which were regarded as
more conducive to a Christian life. The nomadic pastoral
lifestyle was substituted by permanent settlements, where
the missionary could regulate the activities of the
residents. Cattle raising was substituted by agriculture.
The residents of the mission station were expected to adhere
to gender roles assigned to men and women in EurOpe, leading
to a shift in indigenous gender roles. The men became the
producers and breadwinners, while the women retreated into
the private sphere and devoted themselves to household
chores and to the family. Marriage and domesticity were
seen as imperative for the improvement of women's morals and
for the development of characteristics in keeping with her
new role of "Mutter," “Gattin” and "Hausfrau." The language
was also transformed to serve the needs of religion and
conversion.

Resistance to these changes resulted eventually in the
failure of the mission and in the request for colonial
intervention. Hahn attributes this failure to racial
causes, such as the lack of feelings, of history and of
intellectual development among the Herero. The Khoisan,

like the Amerindians are condemned as "nicht

196
zivilisationsfahig," a characteristic, which is seen as
innate. Climatic theories are employed to explain the
degeneration of the African. These explanations for the
failure of the mission illustrate the emergence of a more
exclusive discourse on racial superiority that clashes with
and finally replaces missionary discourse.

It is true, that the travelers discussed in this
dissertation were not representatives of a colonial power.
They rejected and distanced themselves from the exploitation
and violence associated with colonial domination. The
purpose of their voyages was framed either in terms of
science and the pursuit of knowledge or in terms of
spiritual guidance and salvation. All three travelers
express humanitarian reasons for undertaking their journey.
However, as my dissertation illustrates, the discourse
belies their intentions by constructing the Other in a
manner that opened a space for colonial expansion. This
empty space was eventually occupied in 1884 with the

establishment of German colonial rule in South West Africa.

NOTES

I. Notes to Introduction

1. According to David Spurr, the concept of the Other
is based on the principles of exclusion, boundary and
difference. It has its origins in “the anxiety over the
preservation of cultural order and in the need to designate
the unknown by a set of signs which affirm, by contrast, the
value of culturally established norms." This anxiety is
projected onto the racial and cultural Other, who serves as
a scapegoat. Psychoanalytic theory sees the construction of
the Other as not only the result of fear and recognition of
difference, but also of a subconscious desire for the Other
which must be resisted. It reflects the crisis of the
subject, who is threatened by the collapse into a state
without any boundaries. This crisis was connected to the
fear that the white race could degenerate and be absorbed by
the other ones, and embodies a relationship marked by a
simultaneous horror and fascination of becoming like the
Other. The Rhetoric of Empire: Colonial Discourse in
Journalism, Travel Writing, and Imperial Administration
(Durham: Duke UP, 1993) 77-78.

2. John Boening, "Herder and the White Man's Burden:
the Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit and

the Shaping of British Colonial Policy," Johann Gottfried

197

198
Herder: Language, History and the Enlightenment, ed. Wulf
Koepke (Columbia: Camden, 1990) 238-239.
3. This sentiment is expressed in Herder's epistle,
"Der Deutsche Nationalruhm," in which he lists "Unschuld,"
”Mafligung," “Weisheit” and "That zum Wohl der Menschen" as

national characteristics. Briefe zu Beffirderung der

 

Humanitat, vol. 18 of Samtliche Werke, ed. B. Suphan

 

 

(Berlin: Weidmann, 1883) 208-216.

4. Isaiah Berlin, Vico and Herder: Two Studies in the

 

History of Ideas (New York: Viking, 1976) 161.

 

5. Christoph Meiners, GrundriB der Geschichte der

 

Menschheit (1793; Kfinigstein/Ts.: Scriptor, 1981) 27.

 

6. Pagden, Anthony, Eurgpean Encounters with the New

 

World (New Haven: Yale UP, 1993) 17-21.

7. William Stewart, Die Reisebeschreibung und ihre

 

Theorie im Deutschland des 18. Jahrhunderts (Bonn: Bouvier,

 

1978).

8. Ralph-Rainer Wuthenow, Die Erfahrene Welt:

 

Europaische Reiseliteratur im Zeitalter der Aufklargpg
(Frankfurt a.M: Insel, 1980).

9. Hans-Wolf Jager, "Reisefacetten der
Aufklérungszeit," Der Reisebericht: Die Entwicklung einer

Gattungyin der Deutschen Literatur, ed. Brenner (Frankfurt

 

a.M: Suhrkamp, 1989) 265.
10. Benita Parry discusses several theories of colonial

discourse. Colonial discourse, as defined by Fanon,

199
constructs a binary opposition, in which the two polarities
are defined by "the white as the sovereign and black as its
transgression, with its attendant chain of naturalized
antitheses." This dichotomy "operates to deform the
dialogical interaction of self with other selves ... into
the conflictual self-other colonial relationship" (28).
Homi Bhabha and Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak, on the other
hand, disperse the fixed, unitary categories of self and
other. Bhabha states that "the objective of colonial
discourse is to construe the colonized as a racially
degenerate population in order to justify conquest and rule"
(40). While he leaves room for resistance, Spivak, in
contrast, assigns colonial discourse an absolute and
totalizing power, which constitutes and disarticulates the
native. "Problems in Current Theories of Colonial

Discourse," Oxford Literary Review 9 (1987): 27-58.

 

Peter Hulme defines colonial discourse as "an ensemble of
linguistically-based practices unified by their common
deployment in the management of colonial relationships....
Underlying the idea of colonial discourse ... is the
presumption that during the colonial period large parts of
the non-European world were produced for Europe through a
discourse that imbricated sets of questions and assumptions,
methods of procedure and analysis and kinds of writing and

imagery." Colonial Encounters: Europe and the Native

 

Caribbean, 1492-1797 (London: Methuen, 1986) 2.

 

 

200
11. Ronald Inden, "Orientalist Constructions of

India," Modern Asian Studies 20.3 (1986): 401-446.

 

12. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage,

 

1979).

13. The term "contact zone" refers to "social spaces
where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each
other, often in highly assymetrical relations of domination
and subordination ..." [Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes:
Travel Writing and Transculturation (London: Routledge,
1992) 4.]

14. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Studies in
Travel Literature and Transculturation (London: Routledge,
1991).

15. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How

Anthropology Makes its Object (New York: Columbia UP, 1983)

 

31.

16. Sara Mills, Discourses of Difference: An Analysis
of Women's Travel Writing and Colonialism (London:
Routledge, 1991) 87-107.

17. Dennis Porter, "Orientalism and Its Problems,"
Eurgpe and Its Others, ed. Francis Barker et a1.
(Colchester: U of Essex, 1985) 179-182.

18. Lata Mani and Ruth Frankenberg, "The Challenge of

Orientalism," Economy and Society 14.2 (1985): 191.

 

19. Mary Louise Pratt, "Scratches on the Face of the

Country; or What Mr. Barrow Saw in the Land of the Bushmen,"

201

"Race,“ Writing and Difference, ed. H.L. Gates, (Chicago: U

 

of Chicago, 1985) 145.
20. Elke Frederiksen, "Der Blick in der Ferne. Zur

Reiseliteratur von Frauen," Frauen Literatur Geschichte:

 

Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur Gegenwart, ed. v.

 

H. Gnug, R. Mfihrmann (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1985) 104-122.
21. Annegret Pelz, "Européerinnen und Orientalismus,"

Frauen - Literatur - Politik, ed. A. Pelz et a1. (Hamburg:

 

Argument, 1988) 205-218.
22. Oriental discourse is a part of colonial
discourse, which is a broader term and includes various

types of writing. While Orientalische Briefe does undermine

 

several popular myths about the Orient and thus differs from
oriental discourse, it can still be read as colonial

discourse.

II. Notes to Chapter One
1. Sergio Moravia, "The Enlightenment and the Sciences

of Man," History of Science 18 (1980): 250.

 

Gay Weber, "Science and Society in Nineteenth Century

Anthropology," History of Science 12 (1974): 260-283.

 

2. Richard Popkin, "The Philosophical Basis of

Eighteenth Century Racism," Studies in Eighteenth Century

 

Culture 3 (1973): 252.

3. Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race in Science: Great

 

Britain 1800-1960 (London: Macmillan, 1982) 29.

 

202

4. Arthur 0. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A

 

Study of the History of an Idea (1936; Cambridge: Harvard

 

UP, 1964) 59.
5. Georg Forster, "Noch Etwas fiber Die

Menschenrassen," Georg Forsters Werke: Samtliche Schriften,

 

Tagebficher, Briefe, Kleine Schriften zu Philosophie und

 

Zeitgeschichte Vol. 8 (Berlin: Akademie, 1974) 146.

 

6. J. Slotkin, Readings in Early Anthropolggy

 

(Chicago: Aldine, 1965) 94.

7. Johann Caspar Lavater, Essgys on Physiognomy,

 

Designed to Promote the Knowledge and the Love of Mankind

 

Vol. I, Trans. Henry Hunter (London, 1798) 135.
8. Patrizia Magli, "The Face and the Soul,“

Fragments for a History of the Human Body Part 11, ed.

 

Michel Feher et al. (New York: Urzone, 1989) 119.

9. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Grundlage des Naturrechts

 

nach Principien der Wissenschaftslehre (Jena: C. E. Gabler,

 

1796) 93.

10. Samuel Th. Sfimmerring, fiber die kfirperliche

 

Verschiedenheit des Negers vom Européer (Frankfurt a. M,

 

1785) ix.
11. Nancy Leys Stepan, "Race and Gender: The Role of

Analogy in Science," The Anatomy of Racism (Minneapolis: U

 

of Minnesota, 1990) 38-57.

12. Johann Gottfried Herder, Ideen zur Philosophie der

 

203

Geschichte der Menschheit, ed. B. Suphan, vol. 13 of

 

Samtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidmann, 1887) 72.

 

13. J.F. Blumenbach, On The Natural Variety of

 

Mankind (De generis humani varietate nativa, 1775; 3rd.

ed., 1795), The Anthropological Treatises, ed. and trans.

 

Thomas Bendyshe (London: Longman, 1865) 152.

14. George Stocking, Bones, Bodies, Behavior: Essays

 

on Biological Anthropology (Madison: University of

 

Wisconsin, 1988) 4.

15. The analogy with animals was a common device. One
example claims that the inhabitants of a country share the
same disposition and qualities as the indigenous animals of
the country. Accordingly, "the Malay may be compared to the
buffalo and the tiger" because "in his domestic state he is
indolent, stubborn and voluptuous as the former, and in his
adventurous life, he is insidious, bloodthirsty and
rapacious as the latter". Similarly, "the Arab is said to
resemble his camel and the placid Gentoo his cow"
(Blumenbach 232).

16. Sander L. Gilman, "Black Bodies, White Bodies:
Toward an Iconography of Female Sexuality in Late
Nineteenth-Century Art, Medicine, and Literature," "Race,"

Writing and Difference, ed. H.L. Gates (Chicago: U of

 

Chicago, 1985) 232.

17. J. Muller, "fiber die ausseren Geschlechtsteile

204

der Buschmannin," Archiv fur Anatomie, Physiologie, und

 

Wissenschaftliche Medizin (1834): 319-345.

 

18. Muller mentions A. W. Otto's Seltene Beobachtungen

 

zur Anatomie, Physiologie und Pathologie (1824), which

 

contains a description and diagram of black female genitals,
”mit monstroser Clitoris" (324). Otto claimed that the
hypertrOphy of the clitoris was the "real" apron. Muller
also cites a report on the clitoris of blacks in the West
Indies by Clark, who states that that this organ was so
large, that the women had to lift it when they wanted to
urinate (327).

19. Joseph-Marie Degerando, The Observation of Savage

 

Peoples, ed. F.C.T. Moore (1800; Berkeley: U of California,
1969) 63.
20. Friedrich Schiller, ”Schriften zur

Universalgeschichte," Schillers Werke, ed. Karl-Heinz Hahn

 

(Weimar: Hermann Bohlau, 1970) 364.

21. Isaak Iselin, Uber die Geschichte der Menschheit.

 

(Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1976) 297.

22. George Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (New York:

 

Free, 1987) 34.

III. Notes to Chapter Two

1. Michel Foucault, The Order of Things: An

 

Archaeology of the Human Sciences (1966; New York: Vintage,

 

1973) 128-132.

205
2. C. F. P. von Martius and J. B. von Spix, Reise in

Brasilien in den Jahren 1817-1820 3 vols & 1 Tafelband

 

(Mfinchen, 1823-1831).

3. "Die Reise in Brasilien gehort zu den grundlegenden

 

Werken zur Erforschung der Erde. ... Dieses Werk ist
anerkanntermaBen fur die Kenntnis Brasiliens von derselben
Bedeutung gewesen wie Humboldts Schriften ffir die fibrigen
Lander des tropischen Amerika." [qtd. in the preface to

Reise in Brasilien in den Jahren 1817-1820, ed. Karl

 

Magdefrau, 3 vols. (1823-1831; Stuttgart: Brockhaus, 1966)
viii].

4. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Studies in Travel

 

Literature and Transculturation (London: Routledge, 1992)

 

126.

5. Trfibners Deutsches Worterbuch (Berlin: Gruyter,

 

1939) 632.
6. Patrizia Magli, "The Face and the Soul,"

Frggments for a History of the Human Body, vol. 2, ed.

 

Michel Feher et al. (New York: Urzone, 1989) 89-91.

7. G. H. von Langsdorff, Voyages and Travels in Various

 

Parts of the World, During the Years 1803, 1804, 1805, 1806

 

and 1807 (1813; Amsterdam: N. Israel, 1968) 109-110.

8. Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New

 

World (New Haven: Yale UP, 1993) 33.

9. E.A.W. von Zimmermann, Taschenbuch der Reisen, oder

 

206
unterhaltende Darstellung der Entdeckungen des 18.

Jahrhunderts (Leipzig: Gerhard Fleischer, 1803) 47.

 

10. Londa Schiebinger, "The Anatomy of Difference:

Race and Sex in Eighteenth Century Science," Eighteenth-

 

Century Studies 23.4 (1990): 391.

 

11. Nancy Stepan, The Idea of Race In Science: Great

 

Britain 1800-1960 (London: Macmillan, 1982) xviii.

 

12. Alexander von Humboldt, Personal Narrative of

 

Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent,

 

trans. Helen Maria Williams (London: 1822) 3: 227.

13. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans.

 

Constance Farrington (New York: Grove, 1963) 42-43.
14. Abdul R. JanMohamed. "The Economy of Manichean
Allegory: The Function of Racial Difference in Colonialist

Literature,“ “Race", Writing, and Difference, ed. H.L.Gates

 

(Chicago: U of Chicago: 1985) 82.
15. Mary Louise Pratt, "Scratches on the Face of the
Country; or, What Mr. Barrow Saw in the Land of the

Bushmen,“ "Race", Writing and Difference, Gates 139.

 

16. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How

 

Anthropology Makes its Object (New York: Columbia UP, 1983)
32.
17. Ronald Inden, "Orientalist Constructions of

India," Modern Asian Studies 20.3 (1986): 408.

 

18. Pratt defines the term "anti-conquest" as

"strategies of representation whereby European bourgeois

207
subjects seek to secure their innocence in the same moment

as they assert European hegemony." (Imperial Eyes 7).

IV. Notes to Chapter Three

1. Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage,

 

1979)

2. I have used the original version of Hahn-Hahn's
letters published by Alexander Duncker, 1844 in three
volumes and an edited version published by Promedia, 1991.
The quotes from the original version will be indicated by
the volume numbers, whereas the quotes from the edited
version will not have a volume number.

Ida Hahn-Hahn, Orientalische Briefe 3 vols (Berlin:

 

Alexander Duncker, 1844).

Ida Hahn-Hahn, Orientalische Briefe, ed. Gabriele Harbinger

 

(Wien: Promedia, 1991).
3. Annegret Pelz, "Europaerinnen und Orientalismus,"

Frauen - Literatur - Politik Ed. A. Pelz et. a1. (Hamburg:

 

Argument, 1988) 206.

4. Hahn-Hahn was variously called "eine
mannerfressende Amazone (Alexander von Ungern-Sternberg),
"Grafin Kikeriki (Adolf Glasbrenner) and "eine ... Kreuzung
von Kurtisane und Klosterschwester, ... aus einem
Komodiantengeschlecht" (Sengle). For an account of the
reception of Hahn-Hahn's novels in Germany, see Renate

Mohrmann's "Die Gleichheitsideen der Ida Hahn-Hahn," Die

208

andere Frau: Emanzipationsansatze deutscher

 

Schriftstellerinnen im Vorfeld der Achtundvierziger-

Revolution (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1977) 85-117.

 

5. Sara Mills, Discourses of Difference: An Analysis of

 

Women's Travel Writing and Colonialism (London: Routledge,

 

1991) 108-122.

6. "Auf einem verschmutzten und vollig verwanzten
Dampfschiff machte sie die Fahrt durch das Schwarze Meer ...
Mit Packpferden, Zelt und Kamelen begann dann ... der
Karawanenzug durch die Wfiste, auf dem die Grafin taglich
acht bis zehn Stunden im Pferde- oder Kamelsattel saB.

Wegen rauerischer Umtriebe ging es unter bewaffneter
Beduinenffihrung weiter ... . Hahn-Hahn scheute keine

Strapazen." (R. Mohrmann, Die andere Frau 94).

 

7. Elke Frederiksen demonstrates how Hahn-Hahn
resurrects forgotten goddesses amongst the ruins of Egypt,
which acquire a utopian significance. She discovers a
defiled temple dedicated to Isis, the goddess of fertility.
She questions why the temple of Edfu was dedicated to Apollo
when it had images of Isis on the walls. By immersing
herself in the past and learning about women's history, she
creates a vision for a better future. "Der Blick in die

Ferne. Zur Reiseliteratur von Frauen," Frauen Literatur

 

Geschichte: Schreibende Frauen vom Mittelalter bis zur

Gegenwart, ed. v. Hiltrud Gnug, R. Mohrmann (Stuttgart:

 

Metzler, 1985) 104-122. However, Frederiksen's study of

209
Hahn-Hahn's letters as an inner journey of self-discovery
renders the Orient as a mere backdrop against which the
development of the writer's self takes place. Egypt is
turned into a stage for Hahn-Hahn's utOpian visions.
8. Annegret Pelz illustrates this ambiguity in Hahn-

Hahn's Orientalische Briefe. According to her, Hahn-Hahn

 

chooses to remain an outsider to both cultures, a homeless
traveler: "Durch die Assoziation von Orient und Frau
beschreibt sich Hahn-Hahn selbst als eine Reisende, die
nicht als "fremde Frau" im "weiblichen Orient" aufgeht,
sondern beiden Kulturen gleichermaBen exterior bleibt."
"Europaerinnen und Orientalismus" 218.

9. "Lecons des temps passés répétées sur 1es temps

présens" is the title of Chapter 12 in Volney's Les Ruines

 

ou Meditation sur les Revolutions des Empires (Brussels,
1830).

10. These unselfish motives are reiterated later in
stronger terms: "Um Hofnungen zu sammeln, Hofnungen die
sich nicht im Geringsten auf mich oder meine Person
beziehen, mache ich diese Reise; denn ich hoffe nicht ein
interessantes Buch fiber sie zu schreiben, ich hoffe nicht
poetisch angeregt durch sie zu werden, ich hoffe auch nicht
ein seliges Leben zu ffihren ...;" (1: 282-83).

11. Wilhelm Halbfass, India and Europe: An Essay in

Understanding (Albany: SUNY, 1988) 72.

 

210

12. On her return, Hahn-Hahn yearns for the past that
she has left behind in the Orient and compares it with the
present that she finds in Europe: "Man hat in der
Vergangenheit im Schattenreich gelebt, aber diese Schatten
sind so majestatisch und ehrfurchtgebietend, daB sie einen
... grbBeren Eindruck auf die innerlichste Seelenstimmung
machen, als die Gebilde der Gegenwart in ihren bunten,
zerfetzten, anspruchsvollen Gewanden und Attitfiden. Sie
sind so kraus und konfus, daB sie dunkel - aber jene
Schatten so einfach und wahr, daB sie licht aussehen. Aus
dem Licht der ungesitteten Welt trat ich in das Zwielicht
europaischer Kultur- und Zivilisationsbestrebungen
zuruck..." (339-340).

13. Mary Louise Pratt, Imperial Eyes: Studies in

 

Travel Literature and Transculturation (London: Routledge,

 

1991) 134.

14. Hahn-Hahn seems to be criticizing the convention
of the “pittoreske Stadtebeschreibung," popular in
contemporary German travel writing. Jakob Philipp
Fallmerayer's description of "Stambul" provides an
appropriate example for this type of writing, which aimed at
creating "ein schones Bild" for its readers: "Ein
unfibersehbares Gewimmel von Hohlziegeldachern und
Holzgezimmer, von Garten, Zypressenwaldern, Kegelbergen und
Lusttalern, von bleigedeckten goldblitzenden Spitztfirmen und

Tempelkuppeln, ... Es ist ... ein Atlantis der

211
Glfickseligkeit, ein Vorratshaus irdischer Wonne, ... voll
Blumenduft, Licht und Schatten und langer Karawanenzfige,
voll musikalisch-sausenden Wogenspiels, voll Gondelndrang

und vorfiberschiffender Delphine" [Fragmente aus dem Orient

 

(Tfibingen: J.G. Cotta, 1845) 339].

15. Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt (1988; Berkely:

 

U of California, 1991) 1-33.

16. The cataract, like Constantinople, turns out to be
a betrayed dream. Hahn-Hahn's expectations were quite
different as revealed in an earlier passage, in which the
cataract is used as a metapher for the Orient: "Das
Morgenland kommt mir vor wie ein ungeheurer Katarakt, Wasser
auf Wasser immerfort! ... rundumher Stille, Majestat,
Schweigen; sonst nichts! alle Krafte sind gesammelt und
gehen auf in dieser einen groBen Gesamtexistenz. Wozu nfitzt
dies aber? ... welch ein Resultat ergiebt sich? - ... Der
Strom, ... der im Wogenschall verzehrt zu werden schien,
flieBt nun weiter, ... zertheilt sich in ... tausend Bache,
die beleben, ernahren, erfrischen, ... Grfinder einer andern
Welt und einer andern Civilisation werden indem sie neue
Elemente entwickeln, aufnehmen und verarbeiten: das ist
unser Abendland" (2: 310). The cataract of Hahn-Hahn's
imagination appears to destroy everything that is drawn into
its vortex, but it is still surrounded by grandeur. Out of

chaos comes order: the Occident. In contrast, the cataracts

212
of Assuan defy representation and remain in a state of
chaos, without any purpose or function.
17. Patrizia Magli, "The Face and the Soul,"

Fragments for a History of the Human Body, vol. 2, ed.

 

Michel Feher et al. (New York: Urzone, 1989) 93-94.

18. Hahn-Hahn's criticism of the Orientals' "four-
1egged habits" also questions the anatomical distinctions
made by Blumenbach and Herder between humans and apes.
Herder describes "die bildende Mutter" creating man with the
words: "Steh auf von der Erde! Dir selbst fiberlassen,
warest du Thier wie andre Thiere; aber durch meine ... Huld
... gehe aufrecht und werde der Gott der Thiere" (Samtliche
W355; 13: 114). Hahn-Hahn's references to Orientals lying
around on the ground reflect an ambivalence about the very
notion of humanity. The question that the Other evokes in
Hahn-Hahn is: what is human and what is beast? Where do the
boundaries lie? This question is raised again at the slave
market.

19. Sigrid Weigel, “Die nahe Fremde - das Territorium
des "Weiblichen" : Zum Verbaltnis von "Wilden" und "Frauen"
im Diskurs der Aufklarung," Die andere Welt: Studien zum

Exotismus, ed. T. Koebner, G. Pickerodt (Frankfurt a.M:

 

Athenaum, 1987) 171-199.
20. E. Frederiksen notes that Hahn-Hahn, "... spricht

sich entschieden gegen die Haremsklaverei aus ..." and

213
interprets it as a sign of her heightened social awareness.
"Der Blick in der Ferne" 117.

A. Pelz sees the criticism of the harem as a form of
“Kulturkritik,” and draws a parallel between the women of
the harem and women from Hahn-Hahn's own aristocratic
circle: "[Sie] beobachtet ... in dem streng
hierarchisierten Harem Deformationen wie Passivitat,
Leblosigkeit und erstarrte Korperlichkeit, die ihr aus der
eigenen Kultur bekannt sind. Diese Deformationen lassen die
Frauen korperlich "unterentwickelt" erscheinen und ihre
individuellen Gesichtszfige unter einer dicken Schicht von
Schminke zur Maske erstarren, so daB sich insgesamt eine
Existenz offenbart, die "zum Erschrecken materiell" ist.
Pelz concludes that this experience leads Hahn-Hahn to
distance herself from a culturally determined concept of
femininity: she dismisses her maid and changes her apparel
for a "Knabenanzug." "Europaerinnen und Orientalismus" 208-
209.

21. Leila Ahmed, "The Discourse of the Veil," nggg
and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate
(New Haven: Yale UP, 1992) 151.

22. Ahmed illustrates how the equation of the West
with progress and modernity and the East with stagnation and
tradition has continued in post-colonial discourse and still
colors discussions about women in developing countries.

Women's emancipation in these countries was taken up by an

214
intellectual elite, which was acquainted with Western
thought. Consequently, "progress" for women was imported
from the West and required an abandonment of indigenous
culture. The women's issue has, in fact, little to do with
her: instead it is used as a bone of contention between
fundamentalists, who support existing indigenous traditions
and the progressive liberals, who advocate Westernization.
Ahmed feels that each society has to engage critically with
its own heritage in its own terms, rather than adopt a
totally alien culture with its own tradition of misogyny.
The latter course would tantamount to the exchange of an
indigenous form of patriarchy for a Western style of

patriarchy. "The Discourse of the Veil," Women and Gender

 

in Islam 152-168.

23. The emancipated protagonist Catherine complains,
"Das Recht ist von Mannern erfunden; man lehrt sie es deuten
und anwenden; unwillkfirlich kommt es ihrem Vortheil zu gut.
Manner dfirfen ja Alles thun, Alles wissen, Alles lernen.
Sie sitzen zu Gericht und entscheiden, wie Gott selbst, fiber
die Seelen und fiber Leben und Tod. ... Sie vertheidigen das
Vaterland, sie umschiffen die Welt - und wir ... wir sehen
zu! ..." When her interlocutor mocks her for suggesting
that women could do things that nature had made impossible,
she retorts: "Unmfiglich? - schickt die Madchen auf die
Universitat, und die Knaben in die Nfihschule und Kfiche: nach

drei Generationen werdet ihr wissen, ob es unmfiglich ist,

215
und was es heiBt, die Unterdrfickten sein."
Frauenemanzipation im deutschen Vormarz: Texte und

Dokumente, ed. Renate Mohrmann, (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1978)

 

104.

24. The protagonist Cornelie states, "Gleich und
gleich: so mfissen die Geschlechter gegenfiberstehen und in
einem Gleichgewicht, welches aus der sittlichen Basis der
Selbstbestimmung und Selbsterkenntnis entspringt, den
Vertrag der Ehe miteinander schlieBen - woraus hervorgeht,
daB nicht alles dulden, nicht alles verzeihen, nicht alle
Selbstandigkeit im Handeln und Denken aufgeben ihre heilige

Pflicht wird." Frauenemanzipation im deutschen Vormarz 111.

 

25. The difference between publicly visible European
women and veiled, mysterious Oriental women is transposed
onto the landscape in this comparison between the Rhein and
the Nile: "Der Rhein kommt mir vor ... wie eine Frau vor,
die machtige Leidenschaften erregt und empfunden hat, und
durch sie mit einem Zauber ausgestattet ist, dem sich nicht
widerstehen lfiBt; - der Nil, wie eine Nonne in tiefer
Abgeschiedenheit, einsam ..., gleichffirmig, still und in
dieser Stille ihre Geheimnisse bewahrend" (3: 188-89).

26. The veil, according to Montagu, "disguises them
and there is no distinguishing the great lady from her
slave. It is impossible for the most jealous husband to

know his wife when he meets her." Mary Wortley Montagu,

216

Letters from the Levant During the Embassy to Constantinople

 

1716-1718 (1838: New York: Arno, 1971) 127.

 

27. At the baths of Sophia, Montagu describes the
women's reaction to her clothes: "I was ... forced to open
my shirt and show them my stays, which satisfied them very
well; for I saw they believed I was locked up in that
machine, and that it was not in my own power to open it,
which contrivance they attributed to my husband" (Letters

from the Levant 108). Although she portrays herself as the

 

object of curiosity and can thus point out that fashions
oppress women and abuse their bodies in Europe too, Montagu
still remains in control of the representation, as the
phrase "I saw they believed ..." suggests.

28. Faustine remarks, "Wie komisch sind die Manner!
Ganz ernsthaft bilden sie sich ein, der liebe Gott habe
unser Geschlecht geschaffen, um das ihre zu bedienen."
Later she adds, "Ich will nur, daB die Manner mit ihnen [den
Frauen] umgeben wie mit ihresgleichen und nicht wie mit

erkauften Sklavinnen, ..." Frauenemanzipation im deutschen

 

Vormarz 104-105.

Hahn-Hahn's views on the position of women becomes even more
ambiguous in the following passage, in which she praises the
Bedouins, using them as a foil to criticize European marital
relationships: "Die Ehe ist ernst und streng; der Mann ist
Herr, Weib und Kind gehorcht und bedient, aber nicht

widerwillig ... einem launenhaften Gemal ..., sondern dem

217
Oberhaupt der Familie. In Verhaltnissen die auf lauter
selbstandig kraftige Individualitaten basirt sind, kann dem
Weibe kein andrer Platz angewiesen werden. ... Je
unselbstandiger der Mann, ... umsomehr verliert er dem Weibe
gegenfiber das oberhauptliche Ansehen, das er in der Freiheit
hat” (2: 273). Even though her novels project women as
individuals in their own right, here Hahn-Hahn still
reserves individuality as a male prerogative. Later she
adds, "die Weiber leben ... ziemlich abgesondert von den
Mannern, weil ... die Manner sie nicht zum Zeitvertreib
nfithig haben," which again shows her male-centered
perspective.

29. Yet, in Zwei Frauen Hahn-Hahn demonstrates how the

 

concept of "Mensch" was reserved for men. Cornelie is a
timid, undemanding wife in awe of her brilliant husband,
Eustach von Sambach. In order to please him, she begins to
read and educate herself, only to develop a will of her own.
Eustach mocks her for her independent thinking with the
words, "Also, Du denkst bereits?" She responds, "Wie sollt'
ich nicht denken? bin ich nicht Mensch?" Eustach explains,
"Freilich, ... bist Du das ... aber nur beilaufig;
hauptsachlich bist Du Weib. Mensch, siehst Du, ist ein ganz
abstrakter Begriff, ... Man muB sein Mann oder Weib,
Beherrscher oder Diener, immer das, wozu man durch
Organisation, Bedingungen und Verhaltnisse bestimmt wird."

Frauenemanzipation im deutschen Vormarz 107.

 

218

30. In Zwei Frauen, however, Cornelie not only states

 

the opposite opinion but also criticizes people (like Hahn-
Hahn) who use Christianity as an argument to denigrate non-
Christians: "Ich habe ... die vollkommene fiberzeugung, daB
das Christentum keineswegs den gfinstigen EinfluB auf den
Zustand des weiblichen Geschlechts gefibt habe, welchen man
ihm beizumessen pflegt ... und ich glaube wirklich aus
keinem andern Grunde, als weil man ein bchhen pfaffisch den

blinden Heiden nichts Gutes gfinnen mag." Frauenemanzipation

 

im deutschen Vormarz 110.

 

31. Sander Gilman, "The Image of the Black in the

Aesthetic Theory of the Eighteenth Century," On Blackness

 

Without Blacks: Essays on the Image of the Black in Germany

 

(Boston: G.K. Hall, 1982) 19-34.

V. Notes to Chapter Four

1. Heinrich Barth, Reisen und Entdeckungen in Nord-

 

und Central-Afrika in den Jahren 1849 bis 1855: Tagebuch

 

seiner im Auftrag der Britischen Regierung unternommenen

 

Reise (Gotha, 1857).

Friedrich Hornemann, Tagebuch seiner Reise von Cairo nach

 

Murzuck, der Hauptstadt des Konigreichs Fessan in Afrika in

 

den Jahren 1797 und 1798 (Weimar, 1802).

 

Heinrich Lichtenstein, Reisen im sfidlichen Afrika in den

 

Jahren 1803, 1804, 1805, und 1806 (Berlin, 1811-1812).

 

219

2. Carl Hugo Hahn, Tagebficher. 1837-1860, ed. Brigitte

 

Lau (Windhoek: Archives Services Division of the Department
of National Education, 1984).

3. Horst Grfinder, Welteroberung und Christentum: Ein

 

Handbuch zur Geschichte der Neuzeit (Gfitersloh: Mohn, 1992)

 

321.

4. Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of

 

Christianity (New York: Harper, 1953) 1132.

 

5. Hajo Holborn, A History of Modern Germany 1840-1945

 

Vol. 3 (New York: Knopf, 1969) 123.

6. "ein menschen- und geschichtsloser Raum".
Henning Melber, "Das doppelte Vermachtnis der Geschichte:
Nationswerdung, KolonisierungsprozeB und deutsche
Fremdherrschaft in Namibia (ca. 1800-1914)" in Diskurs:
Bremer Beitrage zu Wissenschaft und Gesellschaft 6 (Bremen:
Bremen U, 1982): 35.

7. Winifred Hoernle, The Social Organization of the

 

Nama and Other Essays, ed. P. Carstens (Johannesburg:

 

Witwatersrand UP, 1985) 41.

8. H. Vedder, "The Herero“ The Native Tribes of South

 

West Africa, ed. C.H.L. Hahn (Cape Town: Cape Times, 1928)

 

199.

9. Brigitte Lau, Southern and Central Namibia in

 

Jonker Afrikaner's Time (Windhoek: National Archives, 1987)

 

76.

220
10. Adam Kuper, "The Magician and the Missionary,"

South Africa and the Anthropologist (London: Routledge,

 

1986) 152.
11. Nicholas Thomas, "Colonial Conversions:
Difference, Hierarchy, and History in Early Twentieth-

Century Evangelical Propaganda," Comparative Studies in

 

Society and History 34.2 (1992): 380.

 

12. What Hahn calls Schilfhfitten were houses built with
skillfully prepared reed mats. These were airy, water proof
and could easily be dismantled which suited their lifestyle
of moving with their cattle within a certain territory.

More importantly, it was women who controlled this sphere of
social life: they collected the reeds, built the houses and

owned them. (Brigitte Lau, Southern and Central Namibia in

 

Jonker Afrikaner's Time 68-73).

 

13. J. Irle, Die Herero: Ein Beitrag zur Landes-,

 

Volks- und Missionskunde (Gfitersloh: Bertelsmann, 1906) 78.

 

H.G. Luttig, The Religious System and Social Organization of

 

the Herero: A Study in Bantu Culture (Utrecht: Kemink en

 

zoon, 1933) 33.

J.S. Malan, Peoples of SWA/Namibia (Pretoria: HAUM, 1980)

 

40.

14. Mamre, Rehoboth and Bersheba are all names from
Exodus, the Old Testament. Orange River: Garieb, also
lGarip was named in honor of the Dutch royal house of Oranje

when the Cape was under Dutch rule.

221

15. Anthony Pagden, European Encounters with the New

 

Wgrlg (New Haven: Yale UP, 1993) 157.

16. According to Maria Mies, ”the concept of labour is
usually reserved for men's productive work under capitalist
conditions, which means work for the production of surplus
value". ["Social Origins of the Sexual Divisions of

Labour." Women: The Last Colony (Zed: New York, 1988) 68-

 

69]. Since cattle was not a commodity, but an integral part
of the Herero's social life, cattle breeding and herding was
not seen as productive labor.

17. See Simone Prodolliet for the relationship between

women missionaries and native women. Wider die

 

Schamlosigkeit und das Elend der heidnischen Weiber: Die

 

Basler Frauenmission und der Export des europaischen

 

Frauenideals in die Kolonien (Zurich: Limmat, 1987).

 

18. Wangemann, Ein Reise-Jahr in Sfidafrika:

 

Ausffihrliches Tagebuch fiber eine in den Jahren 1866 und 1867

 

ausgeffihrte Inspectionsreise durch die Missions-Stationen

 

der Berliner Missions-Gesellschaft (Berlin, 1868) 569.

 

19. A heavy whip of rhinoceros or hippopotamus hide.

20. The bias in Brincker's dictionary is evident in
the following example: "oserekaze" reads "vornehme Frau
(nach Herero-Begriffen eine wohlgeschmierte, mit ranziger
Butter parffirmierte, mit vielen eisernen Perlen behangene,

recht a la mode wackelnde Hererofrau)." Wfirterbuch und

 

222

Kurzgefasste Grammatik des Otji-Herero (1886; Ridgewood:

 

Gregg, 1964) 196.

21. Rajmund Ohly, The Destabilization of the Herero

 

Language (Windhoek: Academy, 1987) 17.

22. Norman Lewis shows how American missionaries
reedited the Bible to create fear amongst the Panare
Indians, by implicating them in Christ's death, in order to

make them convert. The Missionaries (New York: McGraw Hill,

 

1988) 205.

23. The Spanish case in America provides an
interesting contrast. By the end of the Seventeenth century
all native American languages were banned for the purpose of
evangelisation. It was felt that the translation of sacred
texts into non-Christian languages could alienate those
texts. Eg. "congregation of the Saints" was translated into
Quechua as "merriment of the Saints" (Pagden, 119).

24. Stephen Greenblatt, Learning to Curse: Essays in

 

Early Modern Culture (London: Routledge, 1990) 32.

 

25. The term "verwaiste Gemeinde" used by Hahn to
describe a congregation whose minister, Scheppman had died,
also reflects the paternalistic attitude of the church.
(370)

26. These are the same characteristics used by the
German bourgeoisie to define itself against and to critique
the nobility. Whereas the nobility was degenerate,

superficial, dishonest and unnatural, a member of the

223
bourgeoisie was a serious, sincere, upright "Geffihlsmensch."
With the rise of the bourgeoisie, this social antithesis
between the nobility and the bourgeoisie became a national
antithesis that was used to define German characteristics in
opposition to competing nations. Hahn, for example,
compares the Herero with the French: "Die Ovaherero scheinen
mit keinem Volk in Europa mehr Ahnlichkeit zu haben als mit
den Franzosen: geschwatzig, tandelnd, lachend, zankisch,
prahlerisch ..." He continues to accuse them of "Unzucht,"
vanity and cowardice (243). Later he uses those
characteristics appropriated by the bourgeoisie to define
the German race: "... kein Schwarzer ahnelt einem Germanen,
diesem energischen, tiefen, geffihlvollen und biederen
Menschenschlage" (593).

27. Dieter Richter points out that pedagogy in the
18th and 19th centuries aimed at "die Restriktion spontaner
oraler Befriedigung, um das Erlernen von Lustaufschub und
Triebkontrolle, wobei ... orale und genitale als primate
Triebe der Kinder die ... Aufmerksamkeit der Erzieher
fanden." Das fremde Kind: Zur Entstehung der Kindheitsbilder

des bfirgerlichen Zeitalters, (Frankfurt a.M.: Fischer, 1987)

 

63.

28. The taboos of incest and cannibalism are often
projected onto the Other. According to Peter Hulme,
"boundaries of a community are often created by accusing

those outside the boundary of the very practice on which the

224
integrity of that community is founded. This is ... both a
psychic process - involving repression and projection - and
an ideological process - whereby the success of the
projection confirms the need for the community to defend
itself against the projected threat, thereby closing the
circle and perpetuating it." He sees this as "the central
regulating mechanism of colonial discourse." Colonial

Encounters: Europe and native Caribbean, 1492-1797 (London:

 

Methuen, 1986) 85.

Hayden White interprets the horrors about the practices of
incest and cannibalism as a projection of repressed sexual
desires and anxieties. "Such fantasies," he states, "are
sublimations of an idyll of unrestricted consumption, oral
and genital, and its alternative, the need to destroy that

which cannot be consumed." Tropics of Discourse: Essays in

 

Cultural Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1990) 188.

 

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