Abstract (eng)
This master thesis focuses on the influence of the first modern mass medium, the „panorama“, in contemporary german literature of the 19th century. Since 1800, the panorama gave urban people in early european metropolises the opportunity to view the presented painting from a heightened platform in the middle of the panorama rotunda in its entirety. The artwork is fixed in a circular way over 360 degrees of the inner wall and pictures landscapes or cities in the realistic painting technique „trompe l’oeil“. It enables its visitors of an all-embracing overlook – the „panoramatic view“. This form of view allows the observer to either focus on details or contemplate the general view – the choice is up to the viewer, who therfore has a significant role in his or her own panoramatic experience. The overall view of the painting’s sujet only developes by linking together numerous views individually selected by the subject.
This way, the panorama breaks free of former, more restricted visual principles and media forms such as the „Guckkasten“, an established medium of the 18th century that is visually organized by the principles of „Rahmenschau“: the visual perception in the „Guckkasten“ is charaterized by a pre-determined perspective through a peephole that defines the sight of the presented painting or copper engraving in the middle of the medium.
The panorama’s viewing platform can hold more than 150 people at the same time – thereby, the panorama not only establishes a new kind of view, but also a more equal and democratic access to art, whose reception is no longer reserved only for higher social classes.
The „panoramatic view“ gained huge influence on the literature oft he 19th century: Its special kind of perception is mirrored in the respective protagonists‘ views, as the analysis of E.T.A. Hoffmann‘s book „Des Vetters Eckfenster“ and Adalbert Stifter‘s narration „Aussicht und Betrachtungen von der Spitze des St. Stephansthurmes“ shows. The protagonists are able to enjoy a panoramatic view over a huge city market from an aloft sited window or over the centre of Vienna from the top of a cathedral, respectively. In both cases the protagonists get a broad and infinite view over the city, with their position high above allowing them also to focus on specific individual details, events or inhabitants rather than the total view.
Beyond that, panoramatic structures also occur as a text organizing element in modern german literatur of the 19th century, as the analysis of Karl Gutzkows novel „Die Ritter vom Geiste“ illustrates. Already the book’s publication as a serial novel follows panoramatic structures: the periodically released parts only give insight in the novel successively, and only the combination of the episodes makes up the entire story line. Moreover, Karl Gutzkow‘s modern narrative concept called „Roman des Nebeneinanders“ (freely translated as the side-by-side novel) also revels in the panoramtic context, because it intends to give a comprehensive overview of society in the novel‘s era from 1849 to 1851, by presenting in detail and in parallel timelines more than one hundred co-existing characters of different social status and their personal living conditions plus political tendency and corporate conditions of this time. The narrative concept also aims to illustrate the chronological parallelism: the novel’s plot doesn’t follow a strictly chronological time lined, but shows the plurality of time by preseting co-existing events within fixed time periods from different points of view.
This master thesis approaches the influence of the panorama on geman 19th century literature by analysing secondary literature that focuses on the importance of the panoramatic view in german literature. In this way, existing knowledge is put together and analysed along the aforementioned narrations of E.T.A. Hoffmann and Adalbert Stifter.
Regarding Karl Gutzkow’s novel „Die Ritter vom Geiste“, the detailed discussion of four chapters along relevant secondary literature in this master thesis also leads to new conclusions: It is shown how the novel’s narrative concept relies on the visual principle of the panorama; especially so in Karl Gutzkow’s attempt to present the plurality of time at a textual level similar to the visual complexity of the panorama.