ModernGermanLiterature18801950

37$ MODERN GERMAN LITERATURE

Jacques's novel Der Kaufherr von Schanghai (1925), in his Reisetage-
buch, in his travel descriptions Die heissen Stddte (1911, 1921) and
Auf dem chinesischen Ffass; and in Max Brod's Abenteuer in Japan
(1938). WILLY SEIDEL (1887-1934) gets to Egypt with his frivolous
humour in Der Sang der Sakije (1914), to the Bedouin desert with
Der Garten des Schuchan (1912) and to Samoa with Der Buschhahn
(1921). Waldemar Bonsels as a theosophist wanders about India
(p, 320). Dauthendey's successor as impressionist globe-trotter is
ALFONS PAQUET (1881-1944), who began as a good lyric poet:
L,ieder und Gesange (i 902); AufErden (i 906); Held Namenlos (1912),
and captured his public with brilliant books of travel: Li oder im
neuen Osten (1912), Er^ahlungen an Bora! (1914). His expressionistic
style makes even Paris exotic in his novel Kamerad Fleming (1912);
in his Utopia of the new humanity, Die Prophe^eiungen (1922), he
takes us to Siberia. Africa is the scene of Ernst Jiinger's Afrika-
nische Spiele\ and, of course, Jakob Wassermann's Eula Matari, with
its symbolic illumination of the fermenting African jungle, is exotic
literature in the extreme sense. French colonial life gives interest
to Friedrich Schnack's travel pictures Auf ferner Insel: Gluckliche
Zeit in Madagaskar (1931). Asia comes (with Turkey) into the work
of Armin T. Wegner (Im Hause der Gluckseligkeit, 1920; DerKnabe
Hussein, 1917), while Kasimir Edschmid finds scope for his pic-
torial extravagances in South America and the Wild West (Der
La%p in Die sechs Mundungen). The more sensational phase of exotic
literature is represented by Hanns Heinz Ewers in his travel books
(Indien und ich, 1911; Mit meinen Augen, 1914) and in his Novellen,
and by Eduard Stucken's Die weissen Goffer (p. 273) with the
Mexican matter that follows it: Gerhart Hauptmann's two Aztec
plays, Klabund's ballad Monte^uma (1919), Jakob Wassermann's
Das Gold von Caxamalka (in Der Geist des Pilgers, 1923), and Bruno
Brehm's Die schrecklichen Pferde (1934).

The Kolonialroman is obviously exotic, but it forms a distinct
genre, though not an extensive one unless we include literature
descriptive of colonies in the wider sense of lands colonized by
Germans wherever they may lie, so long as the colonists preserve
the German language and German culture. This would bring in
such works as Josef Ponten's Im Wolgaland^ not to speak of Aus-
landsromane from Transylvania and all the other German enclaves
or colonies. To the German mind, of course, every land where
German is spoken is Heimat\ and for this reason every Kolonial-