The Local as Colonial Subject: Imperialism and Ethnography in Gerhart Hauptmann's Novellas Bahnwärter Thiel and Fasching

Abstract

Situated amid the stately pine forests of the Spreewald, Gerhart Hauptmann's Brandenburg novellas Bahnwärter Thiel (1888) and Fasching (1887) could hardly offer a more “German” setting. Yet rather than present an intimate depiction of a quaint corner of Germany, these naturalistically candid tales of family tragedies offer imagery that extends beyond their geographic boundaries. Given the imperial context of the novellas, as well as Hauptmann's anthropologically flavored descriptions of his characters and their milieu, they are due for a thicker reading, one that is mindful of nineteenth‐century Germany's collective ethnographic curiosity and the period's colonial discourse on exotic locales and their perceived primitive inhabitants. By foregrounding the distinctive, if not alien, characteristics of the protagonists and their families, as well as the region's geographic and cultural isolation, Hauptmann reveals the heightened ethnographic awareness that pervaded imperial Germany, and reveals a connection between colonialism and Social Darwinism that was not limited to overseas colonies.