Die Literatur der Lebensreform. Kulturkritik Und Aufbruchstimmung Um 1900

Carstensen, Thorsten, and Marcel Schmid, eds. Die Literatur der Lebensreform. Kulturkritik und Aufbruchstimmung um 1900. Bielefeld: transcript, 2016. 352 pp. $48.99 (paperback).Around the turn of the previous century, reform-minded individuals sought to heal the perceived rift between man and nature brought about by Germany's rapid industrialization and urbanization in the late nineteenth century. This loose coalition of reform movements spanned nearly all aspects of human social relationships-from diet to dress to education, including vegetarianism, Heimatliteratur, Wandervogel groups, FKK and other nudist movements, and urban gardening movements-and could perhaps be grouped together under the Rilke line, "Du musst dein Leben andern," a line later echoed by Peter Sloterdijk in his 2009 book of the same title (discussed in Paul North's essay in the volume).The relationship of these ideas to contemporary literature is the focus of a new volume of essays edited by Thorsten Carstensen and Marcel Schmid. The editors make a convincing case for the continued relevance of the ideas of Lebensreform, evidenced in the student movements of 1968 and the chain of Reformhaus grocery stores that still sell Bio-, organic, and natural products in Germany today. While there is a substantial body of scholarship on the cultural, social, historical, and artistic aspects of Lebensreform movements, there is, the editors point out, a rel- ative dearth of scholarly considerations of the literature associated with Lebensreform. This collection offers a competent attempt to address this lack of scholarship that will be of interest or use to those who study the history, literature or cultural politics of Wilhelmine and Weimar Germany.The book contains an introduction and sixteen chapters divided into three sections-contexts, places, and authors-that encompass well-known authors such as Stefan George, Thomas Mann, Hermann Hesse, Gerhart Hauptmann, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Franz Kafka; non-canonized authors such as Wilhelm Schwaner, Wilhelm Speyer, and Heimito von Doderer; and individuals and institutions associated with Lebensreform, including the journal Kunstwart, Heinrich Pudor, Reinhold Gerling, and the sites of Jungborn (a sanatorium in the Harz Mountains), Monte Verita, and Davos.Highlights of the collection include Thomas Rohrkramer's historical contextualization of Lebensreform movements, Carstensen's essay on the journal Kunstwart, North's well-written and comprehensive essay on Kafka's relationship to Lebensreform in his personal life and his writings, Kathrin Geist's reading of Hermann Hesse's In den Felsen as a reflection on the impossibility of fully [re]uniting man and nature, and Schmid's essay on Davos as a site of debate and negotiation in both Mann's Zauberberg and the famous Cassirer-Heidegger debate.In their useful introduction, Carstensen and Schmid emphasize the plurality of Lebensreform and its "paradoxische Zuge" (11). …