“Besuch im Messingwerk,” GS, 7.1, 131–7. Translated by Lisa Harries Schumann.
Broadcast on Radio Berlin, early July 1930, most likely on July 12, 1930. Benjamin dated the typescript, “Radio Berlin, 11 July, 1930.” The Funkstunde announced what was probably a related broadcast for July 1, 1930, and for the Youth Hour on July 12, 1930: “ ‘A Walk through a Brass Works [Gang durch ein Messingwerk].’ Speaker: Dr. Walter Benjamin,” from 3:20–3:45 pm.
CHAPTER 12. Fontane’s Wanderings through the Mark Brandenburg1
Some of you may know this, but many will be astounded when I tell you: the beauty of the Mark Brandenburg was discovered by the youth of Berlin.2 By their vanguard, the Wandervogel.3 The Wandervogel movement is now about twenty-five years old, and it’s been just as long since Berliners ceased being ashamed of “The Good Lord’s Sandbox,” as the Mark is commonly known. And still it took some time before they really started to love it. For in order to love it, you have to know it. In the last century, however, that was something quite rare. Earlier on, only craftsmen and the more well-to-do hiked in the Alps. It occurred to very few people to do so in Germany, and especially in the Mark, until just around 1900 when this great, important movement began among students in Berlin: the Wandervogel. They had had enough, not only of the city, but also of the ritualistic Sunday stroll with their parents; they wanted something more than the same, over-grazed patches of the city; they wanted something new, to walk free in the open air among themselves. They didn’t have money so they couldn’t stray far, and they only had Sundays off. If they really wanted to make use of the short time they had, they needed to find places where they were safe from Berlin’s petite bourgeoisie. Areas without train access or hotels. You know how many such hidden locations still exist today in the Mark, despite the ever-tightening web of light railways across the countryside. But before the train and before the students, individual poets and painters always loved the Mark. Caspar David Friedrich and Blechen were two famous Brandenburg painters from the last century.4 Among the poets, however, none has done more for this landscape than the Berliner Theodor Fontane, who published his Wanderings through the Mark Brandenburg in 1870.5 Far more than tedious descriptions of landscapes and castles, these books are full of stories, anecdotes, old documents, and portraits of fascinating people. Let’s hear from Fontane himself how he felt about these wanderings, and how he got to know the Mark so well.
“Only foreign lands teach us what we have at home.” I learned this first-hand, and my first inspirations for these “Wanderings through the Mark Brandenburg” came to me on excursions in a foreign land. The inspirations became desire, the desire became resolve. It was in the Scottish county of Kinross, whose prettiest point is Loch Leven. In the middle of the loch lies an island, and on the middle of the island, half hidden behind ash trees and black firs, rises an old Douglas castle, the Loch Leven Castle of song and legend. On returning to land by boat, the oars rapidly engaged, the island became a strip, finally disappearing altogether, and for a while, only as a figure of the mind, the round tower remained before us upon the water, until suddenly our imagination receded further into its memories and older images eclipsed the images of this hour. They were memories of our native land, an unforgotten day. It was the image of Rheinsberg Castle that, like a Fata Morgana, hovered over Loch Leven, and before our boat reached the sand of the shore, a question posed itself: beautiful was this image that Loch Leven and its Douglas castle unfurled before you. And that day when you journeyed in your flatboat across Lake Rheinsberg, was it actually less beautiful than the imaginings and memories of a splendid time that engulfed you here? And I answered: no. The years gone by since that day on Loch Leven have returned me to my native land, and the resolutions from that time remain unforgotten. I traversed the Mark and found it richer than I dared hope. Each footbreadth of earth came alive, taking on shapes, and if my descriptions do not satisfy, I must forgo an apology that it was meager surroundings that I was forced to ameliorate or embellish. To the contrary, I was confronted with abundance, leaving me with the certain feeling of never being able to take it all in. And free of care, I gathered it in, not as someone approaches the harvest with sickle in hand, but rather as a rambler, plucking individual ears from the affluent fields.6
So goes Fontane’s preface. Now we will see how he describes a small village in the Mark, about which there seems nothing particularly noteworthy. But one can’t describe something one only sees and knows nothing about. It is not always necessary to know what the experts know. A painter who is painting an apple tree, for example, does not need to know what kind of apples grow on it. He only knows how the light falls through the various types of leaves. How it changes its appearance at different times in the day. How strongly or gently the shadows fall on the grass, stones, or soil. But while it can be seen, it can only truly be seen with experience, with repeated viewings, and with comprehension. So it is with Fontane. There aren’t many lyrical descriptions of nature, and no moonlight rhapsodies, no fancy speeches on the solitude of the forest and other such things you sometimes struggle with at school. Fontane simply wrote what he knew, and that was a lot; not only about kings and castle owners, fields and lakes, but also about simple people: how they live, what they care about, and what sorts of plans they have. Most of you are familiar with Caputh, so you can easily judge for yourselves the description I’ll read to you now.
Caputh is one of the largest villages in the Mark, and certainly one of the longest; it easily measures a half-mile. Its name points to the fact that it’s Wendish. There are too many theories as to what the name actually means for any to have much merit. As certain as the meaning of the name is uncertain was the poverty of its residents in the old days. Caputh has no fields, and the large expanse of water at its doorstep, the river Havel, along with Lake Schwielow, was jealously guarded and exploited by the local Potsdam fishermen, whose time-honored dominion stretched over the entire middle Havel until Brandenburg. So, things were bad for the people of Caputh; farming and fishing were equally unavailable. But necessity being the mother of invention, ultimately the people of this narrow strip of coastline found a way to survive. They devised a two-pronged scheme to make ends meet; men and women divided to attack the problem from two sides. The men became boatmen while the women took up gardening.