Wallenstein Introduction 1
‘The historical novel is firstly a novel, and secondly no history… People ask, who bothers with the Thirty Years War? I couldn’t agree more. Until now I’ve never bothered myself about it.’ This massive epic fiction transmutes the factual historical background into a vivid cinematic panorama of thirteen fateful years of war and intrigue.
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Döblin began researching and writing his second major epic fiction amid his medical duties in a military hospital, within earshot of the heavy guns of Verdun. When Wallenstein appeared in 1920 his compatriots, disoriented by the dreadful war and its aftermath of defeat and failed revolution, wondered what relevance a historical novel about a long-ago war could have for their lives.
For three centuries before 1914 the Thirty Years War (1618-48) had been the defining event in German national consciousness. A hotheaded act by insurgent Bohemians (the Defenestration of Prague) unleashed a series of power-political struggles (Catholic vs. Protestant, empire vs. rebels, Habsburg vs. Wittelsbach, popes vs. worldly princes) which opened the way to decades of opportunistic adventuring by mercenaries, freebooters and foreign armies in the ravaged lands of the Holy Roman Empire. It also provided the stage for Europe’s first entrepreneur of war, who twice raised the largest army seen in Europe since Roman times: the brilliant, driven parvenu after whom the novel is named – although Döblin later thought he should have named his book ‘Ferdinand the Other’, for the emperor is in fact his main fictional focus.
The complexities and consequences of the Thirty Years War have occupied historians ever since. The latest work in English (Europe’s Tragedy by Peter H Wilson) covers a thousand dense but readable pages. Any attempt to portray such complexity as a standard fictional narrative would tax the patience of both writer and reader. Döblin’s strategy was different.
‘The historical novel is firstly a novel, and secondly no history,’ declared Döblin some years later. Wallenstein provides not a single date (a practice he continued twenty years later in his South American trilogy Amazonas); pivotal events are referred to in passing; major figures are mentioned off-stage in conversation or second-hand reports; and surface reality is constantly subverted by passages of imaginative and linguistic virtuosity. Yet, as one reviewer attests, his novel touches on virtually every significant event of the thirteen or so years that it spans.
The language of the novel confirms Döblin as an unparalleled craftsman with the tools offered by Expressionism – tools that in the hands of other writers seldom went beyond surface games with sounds and images, floating free of deeper significance. In these pages the central Europe of the early 17th century is brought vividly alive with its sights, sounds, smells, colours; its habits of thought; the casual brutality of power-wielders (kings, courtiers, young men with guns), the fickleness of political actors unable to see beyond home comforts and their noses, and the helplessness of the common people, who want only to live and worship in peace and dignity.
The first two of the six parts that make up the novel are now posted in English translation, for reading online or downloading.
To orient the reader we provide here some background information and navigational aids. In a separate post we provide in translation a review essay responding to the new critical edition of the novel published in 2001. This essay offers (among many other insights) a useful analysis of the cinematic structures and resources deployed by Döblin.
BOOK THE FIRST: MAXIMILIAN OF BAVARIA
Despite appearing directly only in the very last pages, the Bavarian prince Maximilian (of the house of Wittelsbach, rivals of Habsburg) shapes the entire action of this first part. Two historical events bracket the narrative: the defeat of the Bohemians by forces under Max’s command, and the shambolic convention of the Imperial Electors, called by Emperor Ferdinand to legitimise his personal decision to transfer the electoral crown of the defeated King of Bohemia to his more ruthless rival (and cousin) Max. (Seven high dignitaries – three archbishops and four territorial rulers – held the ‘Kur’ – the right to elect the Emperor – a central constitutional component of the ramshackle but astonishingly long-lived Holy Roman Empire.) The unbalancing of Catholic and Protestant interests that results will, as the courtiers foresee, lead to war.
The back story is this. The Kingdom of Bohemia, part of the Austrian Habsburg lands (Prague was the imperial capital under emperors Rudolf and Matthias 1576-1619), has long been a largely Protestant entity within the Holy Roman Empire, which though nominally Catholic has been losing ground to Protestants for a century or more. In 1617 Ferdinand, supported by his Spanish Habsburg relations, is installed as King of Bohemia, but conflict over the rights of Protestants leads to the famous Defenestration of May 1618, when three imperial officials are thrown from high windows. All survive, but the event, which shocks Europe, brings Bohemia into open armed rebellion. After the death of Matthias, Ferdinand is deposed by the Bohemians in May 1619 in favour of the Protestant ruler of the Palatinate (Pfalz), Frederick, whose wife is daughter of King James I of England. But Ferdinand is meanwhile elected emperor, and crowned in Cologne on 28 August.
To counter the Protestant challenge, Maximilian in 1610 forms the Catholic League to provide a unified Catholic military force. Habsburg is excluded at first, being impecunious and lacking military capability, but within months of becoming emperor, Ferdinand concludes a treaty with Maximilian giving the latter command of military action against the rebels on the rash promise that he, Ferdinand, will repay the costs. On 8 November 1620 the League defeats the Bohemians at the battle of White Mountain outside Prague.
THE OPENING SCENE (first published in The Brooklyn Rail print edition, November 2017)
The feast that opens the novel takes place (we are not told where, but probably in Vienna – certainly no Bavarians are named) shortly after that defeat. This tour de force of Expressionist prose gives clues both to Döblin’s strategy for shaping his narrative, and the linguistic means he employs. The passage merits more than one reading, and is worth reading aloud for the rhythms and the sustained unity of its musical structure.
The primary theme is clearly greed – the endless entitled avarice of the powerful, never to be sated until the whole world is devoured. Which, alas, the limited human frame can never accomplish, despite Ferdinand’s valiant ambition. Here is an early manifestation of Döblin’s enduring critique of Promethean hubris, which he explored further in his next novel: the dystopia Mountains Oceans Giants. The abstract theme is made concrete in the descriptions of the eating process (‘lips like pirates’); in the dishes presented, notably the funeral march of chicken-corpses framed by white candles, and the antiphony of their homely nursery-food trimmings; and in the way that imperial possessions, with their peoples and cultures and landscapes, are reduced to the wines they produce, of which one throat can never swallow enough.
The feasting worthies are depicted with fierce satire: their sumptuous fashions from across Europe enclose human beings anything but admirable. Several names – Caraffa, Liechtenstein, Abbot Anton, Eggenberg, Harrach, Questenberg,Meggau – feature later in the narrative; the Fool too makes several meaningful appearances. Other names – Malaspina, Maneggio etc. – serve like the wine list to highlight the multinational nature of the empire.
Several times attention is drawn to the emperor’s white clothing, which throughout the novel presents an outward display of innocence concealing ‘a coward – sinful, proud, cruel’ as his furious Father Confessor berates him later.
The surreal procession of defeated Palatine dead (which detracts not a whit from enjoyment of the baked mussels) marks the first of many passages that penetrate beneath the world of appearances to darker, sometimes demonic, realms.
BOOK THE FIRST
Boar Chase
Events: Ferdinand’s pilgrimage to Hoheneich; courtiers suspect he wants to flee his responsibilities; a near-fatal hunting accident; Paar’s attempt to ‘rescue’ the emperor.
Characters: Ferdinand, the Fool, Count Paar.
Scenery: Lush countryside, peasantry; a hunt.
Exposition: Eerie legend: the ‘dog gallows’.
Lord Digby
Events: Ferdinand clutches at straws: England will help preserve peace; Digby can mediate with Max; Digby bullies the Palatine envoys; Treasurer Gurland is compelled to cough up lavish gifts.
Characters: Ferdinand, Digby, Rusdorf, Pawel, Gurland, Frey.
Scenery: Vienna townscape; Vienna woods.
Exposition: Flashback: Max forces Ferdinand to concede leadership in military matters.
Count Philipp of Pfalz-Neuburg’s ‘state visits’
Events: A provincial ruler asserts a claim to the vacant electoral crown, meets with abuse in Munich, in Vienna is mixed up in French intrigue, is abducted by unknown hands, causing political alarm.
Characters: Philipp Ludwig of Neuburg; Chancellor Sartorius; Jesaias Leuker; Marcheville; Abbot Anton.
Scenery: Travelling conditions; Munich townscape; Vienna lowlife.
Exposition: Satire: local despot is helpless outside his realm.
‘A Truly Catholic Sensibility’
Events: A secretly circulated book rejoices that the electoral crown will go to Max; Ferdinand stuns his counsellors by confirming this; the counsellors, estranged from Ferdinand, foresee need for an electoral convention; Ferdinand sends confidential (but waylaid) letters to Digby in Munich; Ferdinand and the Fool indulge in a drunken spree in the cellars.
Characters: Noble ladies of good works; Ferdinand; counsellors: Eggenberg, Abbot Anton, Harrach, Questenberg, Trautmannsdorf, Stralendorf, Meggau; the Fool.
Scenery: Viennese high society; court.
Exposition: Poeticised encyclopedia: Vienna street scenes, churches, Castle. Surreal scene: Fool with his ‘books’; the cellars.
Outbluffed
Events: Bavarian forces mobilise to seize the Oberpfalz; dismayed Digby and the Palatine envoys head for home, are robbed by Mansfeld’s mercenaries.
Characters: Digby, Rusdorf, Pawel; Richel; Jakob Keller; Leuker; Lamormaini.
Scenery: Munich court; outskirts; roads.
Exposition:
War and pestilence
Events: War and its consequences: disease, brutality; Mansfeld is paid by Max to campaign in the Rhenish Palatinate; Protestant rebels are defeated by Mansfeld at Wimpfen; Mansfeld and Christian are defeated by the League army at Höchst; they make their way to Frederick’s refuge.
Characters: Mansfeld; Baden-Durlach; Christian of Brunswick; Frederick.
Scenery: Lush countryside, nature.
Exposition: Poeticised encyclopedia: diseases of war.
Political Necessity
Events: Ferdinand fears pressure to abdicate; Lamormaini is caught up in a plot; the counsellors persuade Ferdinand to celebrate the victories at Wimpfen and Höchst; in the confessional, furious Lamormaini mock-executes Ferdinand for his weakness against Max.
Characters: Ferdinand; Lamormaini; Stralendorf; Questenberg; two colonels; Eggenberg.
Scenery: Interiors (plotters’ lair, Jesuit library, confessional); Schönbrunn gardens.
Exposition: Indirect speech to convey dramatic dialogue.
Habsburg on the Offensive
Events: Victory celebrations; marriage of Ferdinand and Eleonore; the Pope demands, and Spain opposes, assignment of the electoral crown to Max; Abbot Anton formally announces a Convocation to decide the matter, enraging Leuker; Max has offered to forego the crown in return for an enormous bribe; the Protestant electors jeer, but remain passive.
Characters: Duke Leopold, Ferdinand, Eleonore; Nuncio Verospi; Abbot Anton, Trautmannsdorf; Oñate; Leuker; Harrach, Questenberg, Eggenberg. Saxon court: Johann Georg, von Schönberg, Lebzelter.
Scenery: Vienna, Innsbruck, Dresden.
Exposition: Contemporary language: Ferdinand’s will; announcement of the Convocation.
The Electors Convene
Events: Ferdinand thrives now the die is cast; continues to shun his counsellors. Leopold throws his weight around. Expensive preparations for the Regensburg event. The two Protestant electors merely send officials. Wilhelm of Neuburg (son of Philipp, brother in law of Max) loudly pursues his claim to the crown. Farcical intrusion of a false claimant. The electors bewail inevitable war, but Ferdinand is immovable. Max (his first live appearance) is enfeoffed; Ferdinand again withdraws from affairs.
Characters: Ferdinand, Leopold, counsellors, ambassadors, Wilhelm of Neuburg, Maximilian.
Scenery: Vienna, Danube voyage, Regensburg, Munich.
Exposition: Contemporary language: declaration to the Convention. Satire: Max as a wild beast chewing on his victory.
BOOK THE SECOND
While the events of the first part are unfolding, defeated Bohemia is subjected to dreadful oppressions. Elites executed, estates confiscated, solid burghers exiled, the currency debauched, Protestants forced to convert or suffer the consequences. Great fortunes are made, but little revenue makes it back to the Treasury in Vienna.
After White Mountain
Events: Occupation and atrocities; scenes (and psychology) of exile.
Characters: Wolfsstirn, Liechtenstein, Count Thurn.
Scenery: Bohemian towns and villages; road to exile; Saxony.
Exposition: Inner dialogue of the exiles.
The Consortium
Events: Looting; the Mint consortium and its economic consequences; Wallenstein’s rise; Bohemian petition rebuffed by the emperor; Jews debate emancipation.
Characters: Michna, de Witte, Bassevi, Wallenstein, Liechtenstein, Slavata
Scenery: Prague: Ghetto, Mint, Castle.
Exposition: Contemporary language: Jewish debates; emperor’s response to petition.
Outside Powers
Events: Diplomatic juggling by England, France, Denmark; inspection visit to Prague; Slavata and Wallenstein enemies; Wallenstein’s bold proposal; Michna nervous.
Characters: James I, Charles I; Gurland, Meggau; Maximilian; Wallenstein; Slavata; Wartenberg; counsellors in Vienna.
Scenery: English court; Prague; Wallenstein’s palace; Viennese court.
Exposition: Poeticised encyclopedia: lists of regiments; revenue offices.
A Bad Dream
Events: Diplomatic skirmishing Bavaria-Spain-Vienna. Brussels conference with Infanta. Wallenstein to Vienna with enormous bribes. Eleonore lost at court. Denmark a threat.
Characters: Maximilian, Leuker, Oñate, counsellors, Infanta, Wallenstein, Bassevi, Ferdinand, Eleonore.
Scenery: Courts at Munich, Vienna, Brussels. Vienna streets.
Exposition: Surreal scene: Ferdinand’s dream
‘The End of Habsburg’
Events: Ferdinand appoints Wallenstein as C-in-C, but in ignorance of how army will be financed. Maximilian swallows his anger. Prague Jews delighted. Bohemians hold semi-secret gatherings; Slavata is drawn in. Exiles feel pride in their countryman Wallenstein.
Characters: Ferdinand, courtiers, Wallenstein, Maximilian and his father, Michna, Bassevi; Slavata.
Scenery: Courts at Vienna, Munich; Prague ghetto, salons.
Exposition: Contemporary language: Letter to Maximilian.
