Theodor Plievier's Des Kaisers Kulis : ideology and fact
Date
1997
Authors
Main, Ross Roberts
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Abstract
Theodor Plievier's highly su~cessful revisionist historical novel Des Kaisers Kulis (1930) deals with events leading to the demise of the German Imperial Navy. The sailors' rebellions in 1917-18 were a manifestation of the common sailor's antipathy towards the officer corps that reflected the discontent in the Weimar Republic between the common man and the privileged classes. Against a prevailing mood of heroic nationalism propagated by the military establishment and society's dominant, conservative elite, Plievier's stirring, anti-war novel offered a critical expose of the hypocrisy and ineptitude of the leadership of the German navy. However, despite the novel's documentary character Plievier had motives other than just a factual recounting of history. Influenced by difficult life experiences, the self-educated Plievier had developed his own individualistic ideology. He saw neither socialism nor capitalism as solutions to the ills of the world. Rather, he hoped for a revolution of the spirit in each individual. He regarded the November Revolution as not only the end of the Great War (1914-18) and the German empire, but also as a unique, historical, global turning point. This new era would be governed by what he believed was man's primal religion -- Individualism.
This thesis focusses not only on how this ideology developed, but also on how it finds expression in both the content and form of the novel. By examining Plievier's selection of the historical data that was availabl,e to him, this thesis evaluates what documented fact has become in the hands of a literary artist, and determines what message the reader is to understand from the work. As well, the thesis focusses on how Plievier expresses his ideology through the depiction of the sailors, particularly Alwin Kobis and Max Reichpietsch, to whom the novel is dedicated.
Plievier's insistence on historical verisimilitude, coupled with an account of his own period of service aboard ship, lend the work an autobiographical quality. A mix of narrative methods provides a dual thrust to the work: a claim to both historical truth and to ideological instruction. Indeed, Plievier's novel is significant in that it broke the taboo of the German Imperial Navy by accurately revealing the deplorable conditions of the revered institution. However, into this historically authentic background Plievier wove the tenets of his ideology. Throughout the novel Plievier attacks capitalism while at the same time ignoring all other political movements or organizations. As well, he glorifies and idealizes Kobis as an example of his 'new man'; the autonomous individual who should serve both as an example and beacon for the rest of mankind. Contrary to the prevailing interpretations offered by the political parties during the Weimar Republic, Plievier invests the genre of the war novel (Kriegsroman) with an individualistic, anarchistic interpretation of the sailors' revolt of 1917. While Plievier was revered by the left of the Weimar Republic and censured by the right, an objective reading disappoints the stereotypical thinking of both sides. Des Kaisers Kulis is the propagandization of Plievier's doctrine which Plievier had developed earlier in life and with which he remained until his death in 1955.