Feminist German Studies

The general narrative surrounding gender dynamics in early 1900s Germany is that as women entered more (force)fully into the public sphere and urban space, male anxiety grew. Men are considered as spectator-subjects and women as viewed objects. The prominence of expressionism’s New Man leaves us asking whether women are included in this New Humanity. In The Female in German Modernisms: The Visual Turn, Geetha Ramanathan seeks to understand more fully women’s positionality in this context by employing a comparative and inter-arts [End Page 130] approach that is informed by feminist theory and criticism. While film is often studied separately from other works within literary and artistic movements, she calls for “comparative modalities across media” (19) and combines discussions of film, literature, painting, and drama to analyze how these modes of artistic expression inform each other and influence modernist aesthetics as a whole. Ramanathan explores female subjectivity and the relationship between women and modernity as portrayed in canonical works largely by men.

The title of the first chapter, “The Languages of Modernism,” refers to intertextualities Ramanathan discerns within visual modernist aesthetics. Identifying ways in which expressionist film conveys key characteristics of modernism, she also argues for the unique contributions of film as both language and medium. For instance, she illustrates the impact of film techniques on Die Brücke (The Bridge) artists, in particular Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, and notes that while drama’s influence on film is assumed, the theater also incorporated cinematic effects. Continuing her discussion of innovations in expressionist drama in the next chapter, Ramanathan considers Georg Büchner’s Woyzeck (1879; Woyzeck, 1954), August Strindberg’s A Dream Play (1901), Oskar Kokoschka’s Mörder, Hoffnung der Frauen (1907; Murderer, the Women’s Hope, 1958) and Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays. Beyond formal aspects, she provides a gender analysis of these works in their various manifestations, capturing a spectrum of views on women’s place in modernity.

Ramanathan then turns her attention to film scripts published by Kurt Pinthus in Das Kinobuch (1913; Movie book). She examines three contributions to Pinthus’s volume by women— Elsa Asenijeff, Else Lasker-Schüler, and Julie Jolowicz— which “give us a different perspective of how women were traversing modernity, and reveal conceptions of how women might be imagined on screen before the filming process that brought the constraints of the studio system and the film apparatus with it” (100). Her astute analyses of these female-authored texts encompass such themes as female desire, the male gaze, power dynamics in public spaces, and suicide. Delving beyond surfaces to reveal women’s interiority, these scripts highlight ways in which patriarchal structures limit women’s participation in modernity and demonstrate that some women were pushing back.

Returning to men’s canonical works, Ramanathan examines Georg Kaiser’s Von morgens bis mitternachts (1912; From morning till midnight) as both play and film, particularly the New Man as portrayed in each format. [End Page 131] She observes ties among stage, film, and graphic arts, and considers the symbolism of women wearing masks. In contrast to the film scripts, the possibilities for women here are decidedly limited and stereotypical, with women serving not as subjects but rather as part of the mise-enscène (135). This theme continues in the chapter on Robert Wiene’s Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920; The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1921). Ramana-than argues that this expressionist film exemplifies ties to painting and literature, contributing to “a new visuality” and altering ways of seeing (139). The final chapter is emblematic of her overall project, examining canonical works across the arts: paintings by Kirchner, films by Walter Ruttmann and Fritz Lang, and the novels of Alfred Döblin. Going beyond the concept of (female) flânerie in her discussion of city streets, she compares both themes and aesthetics, illuminating a range of assessments regarding women’s integration into modernity, with some more optimistic about women’s freedom from gender restrictions in the city.

This book...