Christiane Schwab
Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis, Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
c.schwab@ekwee.uni-muenchen.de
ABSTRACT
This article highlights the connections between the production of folkloristic knowledge and expanding print markets in mid-nineteenth-century Europe. Looking at folkloristic writings from diverse geographical and social contexts, the article primarily focuses on the diverse socio-political and aesthetic sensitivities attached to the increased public interest in popular traditions. While Cecilia Böhl de Faber promoted a strongly idealizing and conservative view of the lower classes of the Spanish countryside, Joseph Mainzer’s works published in the French press addressed the creative potential of collective singing in urban contexts, and Anton Glassbrenner endeavoured to illustrate the democratic spirit of the lower classes in Berlin. The article shows that although all three authors promoted the exoticization and aestheticization of the ostensibly “authentic” habits, tales, and speaking modes of “the folk”, their views on the role of the lower classes within the social structure differed significantly. Keeping in mind the importance of mass media in enforcing collective conceptions of reality and political identity throughout the nineteenth century, this article creates new perspectives on the production of folkloristic knowledge within a broad socio-medial and political context.
KEYWORDS
Periodical Literature; Nineteenth-Century; Literature and Folklore; History of Folklore; Europe
RESUM
Aquest article destaca les connexions entre la producció de coneixement folklorístic i un mercat de la impremta en expansió a l’Europa de mitjans del segle XIX. Mirant els escrits folklorístics de diversos contextos geogràfics i socials, l’article se centra principalment en les diverses sensibilitats sociopolítiques i estètiques vinculades a l’augment de l’interès públic per les tradicions populars. Mentre Cecilia Böhl de Faber promogué una visió fortament idealitzadora i conservadora de les classes baixes del camp espanyol, les obres de Joseph Mainzer publicades a la premsa francesa abordaven el potencial creatiu del cant col·lectiu en contextos urbans, i Anton Glassbrenner perseguia il·lustrar l’esperit democràtic de les classes baixes de Berlín. L’article mostra que, malgrat que els tres autors van promoure l’exotització i l’estetització dels hàbits, contes i maneres de parlar aparentment «autèntics» del «folk», les seves opinions sobre el paper de les classes baixes dins de l’estructura social difereixen significativament. Tenint en compte la importància dels mitjans de comunicació de masses a l’hora d’aplicar les concepcions col·lectives de la realitat i la identitat política al llarg del segle XIX, aquest article crea noves perspectives sobre la producció de coneixement folklorístic en un context sociomediàtic i polític ampli.
PARAULES CLAU
literatura periòdica; segle XIX; literatura i folklore; història del folklore; Europa
REBUT: 4/03/2022 | ACCEPTAT: 20/07/2022
In 1846, the literary journal The Athenæum (1828–1921) started publishing a new column written by the antiquarian enthusiast William John Thoms. In the first sequence of that column, Thoms proposed the term “Folk-Lore” as an umbrella term for “what we in England designate as Popular Antiquities” (quoted after Emrich 1946: 361) and articulated his vision of a joint collection of English folklore. Thoms intended to make use of the vast public reach of The Athenæum to “gather together the infinite number of minute facts […] which are scattered over the memories of its thousands of readers” (quoted after Emrich 1946: 361). He began publishing his own journal three years later, in 1849. This publication, entitled Notes and Queries: Medium of Inter-Communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, Etc., explicitly aimed at collecting and presenting popular traditions and providing a discussion forum for folkloristic amateurs and professionals.1 Notes and Queries remained a journal dedicated to the study of folklore throughout the nineteenth century, inspiring plenty of local imitators (Leary 2000).
At the outset of the nineteenth century, new print and distribution technologies, the liberalization of censorship, increased literacy rates, and the commercialization of print products (for example, through proportionate funding from advertisements) paved the way for the foundation of thousands of newspapers, magazines, and serials across Europe.2 The expansion of printed goods reached ever-broader population groups and increasingly acted as a forum for political, literary, artistic, and scientific debates that had freed themselves from private salons, academies, and expensive subscription systems (Boening 2004: 288; Heilbron 1995: 120). In this setting, the activities and debates of the rising folklore movement made their way into market-oriented print, coinciding with growing public interest in antiquarian and folkloristic issues.3 Learned and literary journals targeting the urban middle classes, such as The Athenæum and Notes and Queries, as well as newspapers and cheap magazines published pieces of ancient and contemporary folk poetry, tales, songs, and the corresponding scholarly commentaries. Also, semi-fictional depictions of popular festivals and dances, dietary and storytelling practices, beliefs, rituals, and clothing habits enjoyed great popularity with a growing audience for periodical literature. Already in the 1820s and 1830s, the Spanish authors Serafín Estébanez Calderón and Ramón de Mesonero Romanos, inspired by Joseph Addison’s and Sébastien Mercier’s portrayals of London and Paris life, published such folkloristic sketches in the periodicals El correo literario y mercantil (1828–1831) and Cartas españolas (1831–1832) (Rubio Cremades 1995). From 1843 to 1844, Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl, who shaped the identity of German Volkskunde, wrote his “Hessische Skizzen” for the supplement of the Frankfurter Konversationsblatt (1832–1866), and from 1851 to 1852 the author George Sand published the series “Moeurs et coutumes du Berry” in the weekly L’illustration (1843–1944). The list of such entertaining-didactic narratives on popular traditions as they proliferated on an expanding print market could be continued endlessly.4
The purpose of this article is to further explore the connections between the expanding print market and the production of folkloristic knowledge in mid-nineteenth-century Europe.5 It examines how folkloristic themes were presented in the context of what Peter Burke has called the early “era of ‘mass communication’” (Burke 2014: 117),6 when journalists and authors from Lisbon to Helsinki felt compelled to respond to the radical social transformations of their age by collecting, describing, and commenting on the supposedly vanishing habits, tales, and speaking modes of the “folk” (O’Halloran 2012; Stocking 1991: 53-56). According to the premise that the construction of knowledge about social groups and structurings is related to social and political imaginaries and produces its own social effects (Daum 2009; Anderson 1983), the article elaborates on the diverse aesthetic and ideological sensitivities attached to the novel interest in folk traditions. While a sizable proportion of the urban middle classes throughout the nineteenth century accused the lower strata of the population of moral “backwardness” – not without fearing their very own social descent –,7 most literary and journalistic representations of popular traditions adopted nostalgic and idealizing stances. Given the loss of long-established social relationships due especially but not exclusively to new forms of production and labour and increased migration from the countryside, the “rural folk” were constructed as a natural preserver of vernacular traditions in genre paintings, costume books, collections of fairy tales and folk songs, and entertaining tales of rural life. This portrayal of the rural population in the media at the time, which emphasizes their remoteness, simplicity, and unaffectedness by upper-class mannerisms, was backed and systematized by the mythological movement, which had been an influential paradigm in social and linguistic inquiry since the late eighteenth century (Campbell; Perraudin 2012). While Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803) was among the first who promoted “folk poetry” as a literary category of its own (Cocchiara 1981: 174-178), many of his nineteenth-century followers, such as the Brothers Grimm (1785–1863; 1786–1859), Vuk Stefanović Karadžić (1787–1864), Thomas Crofton Croker (1798–1854), and Elias Lönnrot (1802–1884) studied oral traditions as aesthetic expressions and a point of access towards vernacular traditions and national history (Bendix 1997: 54). Particularly in the territories annexed by Napoleonic France and in ethnic regions dominated by a “foreign” state system, such as the Baltic regions and Ireland, the perception of folklore was frequently coupled with efforts for political empowerment and national sovereignty (Jaremko-Porter 2012; Dundes 1985). However, as Timothy Baycroft and David Hopkin pointed out in their volume Folklore and Nationalism in Europe during the Long Nineteenth Century (2012), folkloristic engagement cannot exclusively be traced to ethnic nationalist movements. Many folklorists and writers, on the other hand, gathered and disseminated popular traditions out of biographic nostalgia or as a means to form a democratic-republican consciousness (Hopkin 2012).
This survey of the construction of folkloristic themes in nineteenth-century print culture connects with two lines of research: first, on the connections between folkloristic activities and intellectual and/or political history (Baycroft; Hopkin 2012; Campbell; Perraudin 2012; Fabre; Privat 2010); and second, on individual writers’ ties to nineteenth-century folkloristic and/or societal discourse. The article focuses on three (in a global context, relatively unknown) individuals who were chosen as examples for thousands of authors who spread folkloristic themes in middle-class journals, magazines, and serials throughout Europe. Cecilia Böhl de Faber (1796–1877), Joseph Mainzer (1801–1851), and Anton Glassbrenner (1810–1867) were selected for their divergent geographical and ideological backgrounds. However, despite this case-oriented approach, the article does not intend to provide in-depth-analyses of the individual author’s texts, but aims to discuss various general aspects of the connections between the rising print market and the formation of folkloristic knowledge in the mid-nineteenth century, thereby pointing to the diverse aesthetic and ideological sensitivities disseminated through popular folkloristic writings. While Cecilia Böhl de Faber promoted a strongly idealizing and conservative view of the lower classes of the Spanish countryside, Joseph Mainzer’s works published in the French press addressed the creative and political potential of collective singing in urban contexts. The third writer, Anton Glassbrenner, endeavoured to illustrate the democratic and socially equalizing spirit of the lower classes in Berlin. The exemplary view of Caballero’s, Mainzer’s, and Glassbrenner’s writings demonstrates the broad ideological range of folkloristic thought as it was popularized in nineteenth-century print culture. Furthermore, this article demonstrates that the scrutiny of folk poetry, tales, songs, and “folkloristic sketches” within the commercial print landscape enhances our grasp of the production and dissemination of folkloristic knowledge outside the confines of scholarly genres and networks, within more extensive socio-medial and political milieus.
When Cecilia Böhl de Faber started publishing folkloristic sketches in Spanish periodicals in the 1830s, some pioneers had already laid the foundations for the study of the country’s folklore. Inspired by Herder’s idea of “natural poetry”,8 her father, the prosperous merchant Juan Nicolás Böhl de Faber, had published the collection Floresta de rimas antiguas castellanas (1821–1825), aiming at “replacing the classical conception of universal humanity governed by immutable laws with the notion of a historically contingent and geographically conditioned human culture” (Gies 2004: 382). While Cecilia Böhl de Faber shared this perspective on the role of ancient poetry in providing access to a people’s past, she focused on collecting and documenting contemporary oral culture. Böhl de Faber divulged her findings in two ways: first, she produced serial novels and individual sketches for multiple middle-class periodicals and newspapers, including El semanario pintoresco español (1836–1857), El artista (1835-1836), and El museo universal (1857–1869). Second, Böhl de Faber curated entire collections of oral traditions. Among her most notable folklore compilations are Cuentos, oraciones, adivinas y refranes populares e infantiles (1877) and Cuentos y poesías populares andaluces (1859), of which the latter was declared by the literary scholar Montserrat Amores to be the “first testimony of folk tales published in Spain in the nineteenth century” (Amores 2001: 8).
Cecilia Böhl de Faber (who wrote under the male pseudonym Fernán Caballero) skilfully employed fictional prose to introduce her audience to the richness of folklore in southern Spain. With her use of narrative fiction to present and discuss folkloristic materials, she connected with many other contemporary novelists and sketch writers, such as George Sand (1804–1876), Annette von Droste-Hülshoff (1779–1848), and Wilhelm Heinrich Riehl (1823–1897).9 In the prologue to the serial novel La gaviota,10 which first appeared in the periodical El heraldo between May and July 1849, Böhl de Faber clarifies that the novel “serves as a framework” for her considerations “about the intimate life of the Spanish people, their language, beliefs, stories, and traditions” (Caballero 1861: v). She furthermore asserts the authenticity of her account: “And, in truth, we have not set out to compose a novel, but to give an exact, true, and genuine idea of Spain, and especially of the present state of its society, of the way of thinking of its inhabitants, of their character, tastes, and customs” (Caballero 1861: v). La gaviota tells the unfortunate story of an unequal couple:11 the daughter of an Andalusian fisherman, Marisalada, is courted by Dr Stein, a German surgeon who was wounded in southern Spain during the war and was quickly drawn to Marisalada’s genuine singing and her passionate beauty. As is typical of Böhl de Faber’s writing, the novel switches between the narrative modes of storytelling, presentations of folkloristic material, and authorial commentaries. When Dr Stein first hears Marisalada singing, for instance, Böhl de Faber not only describes the circumstances of this event and Dr Stein’s sudden attraction but also records the wording of the ballad Marisalada performs. Before she transcribes all 14 stanzas, Böhl de Faber makes herself explicitly present at the scene as the author-narrator who documents and evaluates the wording and sounds of the piece along with the coordinates between “popular authenticity” and “civilizational artificiality”: “Maria sang one of those songs, which we will transcribe here with all its simplicity and popular energy” (Caballero 1861: 128). Besides this brief appearance, Böhl de Faber also interrupts her storyline with extended explanations of the folkloristic material she has collected. She comments, for instance, that “[t]he Andalusian people have an infinity of songs; these are boleras [sic], either sad or happy; the olé, the fandango, the caña, as beautiful as it is difficult to sing, and others with their own name, among which the romance stands out.” (Caballero 1861: 128) And she adds that the “tune” of the romance is “monotonous”, and that “we do not dare to assure that put to music, it could satisfy even the philharmonic dilettanti” (Caballero 1861: 128). However, it is “the modulations of the singing voice” that makes it “pleasing (not to say charming)” (Caballero 1861: 128). With regard to the main theme of that genre, “[t]he lyrics of the romance generally deal with Moorish matters, or refer to pious legends or sad stories of prisoners.” (Caballero 1861: 128)
Concerning the provenance of the folkloristic items in Böhl de Faber’s fictional works, many contemporary and posthumous critics claim that a significant number of the proverbs, tales, and songs are based on the author’s own recordings.12 Marisalada’s ballad in La gaviota, for instance, is a version of the Albaniña ballad, which in the twentieth century was recorded by folklore scholars as an actual piece of Andalusian oral culture (de la Vega de la Muela 2012). Böhl de Faber did not just collect folk tales, songs, and sayings; she sought to classify her findings and trace historical genealogies, clearly acting as a mediator between professionalizing folkloristic study and a middle-class reading public. Given the overwhelming amount of material collected, she spoke of the “great labour to select among the thousands of records those worthy of being printed and to classify them” (quoted after Amores 2001: 50). Böhl de Faber knew the ballad collections and mythological literature of her time and often commented on the origins of the songs and verses she inserted in her texts, European parallels, or even where they were written down. Given Böhl de Faber’s references, her involvement in collection, and her explicit self-location within folkloristic-mythological discourse, Leonardo Romero Tobar and Montserrat Amores have called her a “folklorista avant la lettre” (Romero Tobar 1994: 144) and a “true pioneer” (Amores 2001: 8) in the field of folklore.13
The narratives in which Böhl de Faber embedded folkloristic material reveal her aestheticizing and nostalgic view of the lower strata of the rural population, which she shared with many other folkloristic writers. As “Beautiful, robust, cheerful, and healthy of heart”, she describes a character in her serial novel “Dicha y suerte” (1858) published in the journal La América: “Vincent had grown up in that great primitive nature, with those patriarchal customs, always breathing that pure air, always under God’s and his father’s eyes.” (Caballero 1925: 17) The remoteness of southern Spain’s rural population from contemporary political and social ruptures, according to Böhl de Faber, ensures them direct access to poetry and makes them guardians of the ancient Spanish chivalric and religious spirit. Her conception of popular poetry as a mirror of pure humanity goes hand in hand with her loyalty to monarchical and religious values. “Poetry is in the air, in the land, in the people (as long as they don’t become democrats)” (quoted after Amores 2001: 31), Böhl de Faber writes to Juan Eugenio Hartzenbusch, a befriended folklorist and playwright. In her view, the hierarchically organized and seemingly timeless agricultural world represents a refuge of long-standing social orders and uncorrupted manners, while city life, marked by social dislocation, jeopardizes the people’s authentic connection to nature. “Poetry is found much and beautifully in the village” (Caballero 1856: 174), she states in her epistolary novel Una en otra, echoing Herder’s conception of the “singing folk” and the mutilated “rabble”,14 “because in the countryside the imagination has a wide path and does not shrink and dwindle as it does in the cities, where it meets with the vice and misery that tear off its wings.” (Caballero 1856: 174).
Joseph Mainzer’s presentations of folkloristic materials and themes in newspapers, journals, and books were likewise informed by Herder’s concept of “natural poetry”. However, the German-born writer of the multiply edited work Singing for the Million (1841) did not advocate an ideology of preserving old orders. Instead, Mainzer’s approach to folk culture was shaped largely by his interest in music and the practice of singing, which, in addition to representing a genuine expression of a people, served as a vehicle for him to realize his philanthropic visions. In 1835, after relocating to Paris from Germany, where Mainzer had acted as a singing master at the seminary at Trier, he began teaching free music sessions to strengthen republican-democratic feelings across different classes (Manz 2013: 41). To evoke a fraternal spirit among his pupils, he chose to perform compositions inspired by folk music instead of the then-common church choirs. In the Paris of the late thirties, which was still energized by the ideals of the July revolution, Mainzer’s projects met widespread response from several social groupings. Especially “[e]arly utopian socialist groups such as the Saint-Simonians had prepared the ground for the notion that music could play a crucial part in the social and moral regeneration of society” (Manz 2013: 34). Mainzer’s singing sessions grew so hugely popular that King Louis-Phillippe banned them in 1839, forcing the musician to relocate to Britain. Here, he established a nationwide public singing and music education movement, founding several singing schools in various places throughout the British Isles and arranging events with up to 5000 participants (Manz 2013: 38).
While Mainzer’s practical engagement was an important medium for the cultivation of folk music, he also left an extensive body of written work through which he communicated his ethnomusicological ideas. During his years in France, Joseph Mainzer wrote for renowned periodicals, such as the Revue des deux mondes (1829–present) and Le national (1830–1851), and the serial Les français peints par eux-mêmes (1840–1842), before editing his own music journals following his arrival in England (Manz 2013: 35).15 Two texts illustrate the ethnomusicological background against which Joseph Mainzer discussed folkloristic questions for a middle-class audience: one rather scholarly article on the characteristics of folk music and one text that falls into the category of the entertaining-didactic folkloristic sketch. The first example, from the Revue des deux mondes, is entitled “Music and popular songs from Italy” (“Musique et chants populaires d’Italie”, 1835) and presents several ethnomusicological principles. Mainzer first contends that a people’s musical tradition, in addition to being influenced by historical and geographical factors, reflects the unique characteristics of the group (Mainzer 1835: 498). Accordingly, “popular music” (“musique populaire”) represents the “book of a people’s intimate life” (Mainzer 1835: 498), while “national music” (“musique nationale”) can be understood as “the book of history: the first recreating the occupations, the manners, the popular habits; the second conforming, in its modifications, to the influence of the political events of a nation” (Mainzer 1835: 498). Mainzer also attempts to explain why some places have a stronger musical legacy than others, referring to the then-widely recognized climate theory. Correspondingly, while humans are constantly at odds with nature in cold countries, the weather conditions in southern countries encourage the continuous creation and repetition of melodies. “The circulation of blood, accelerated by the heat of the sun, is an unending source of drive to pleasure” (Mainzer 1835: 499). A second factor for a people’s musical richness, according to Mainzer, is geographical isolation.16 “Indeed, one can only find truly popular songs where all foreign relations cease, where no fusion with the language or music of another country has yet taken place” (Mainzer 1835: 500). According to the encyclopaedic spirit of the age, Mainzer proposes a classification of folk songs (the war song, the wedding song, the funeral song, the lament, the historical song, the patriotic song, the religious song), providing examples and observations about performances and involving actors as well as regional specificities for each category. At the end of the article, Mainzer acknowledges the connection between music and popular dancing. In this context, he portrays the rhythm and movements of the Italian Tarantella and other regional dances and includes a passage depicting a street scene in the Roman neighbourhood of Trastevere, which he had allegedly witnessed himself (Mainzer 1835: 522).
Joseph Mainzer contributed 17 texts to the monumental print project Les français peints par eux-mêmes. Published by Léon Curmer first in individual instalments and then in eight volumes between 1840 and 1842, this serial aimed to depict the dynamics and characteristics of contemporary French society in entertaining portraits of social types. Mainzer’s contributions to the serial focus on professional types who conduct their businesses or provide services on Parisian streets or public places, such as fruit sellers, bakers, or umbrella traders, revealing an appreciative view of the lifeworld of the urban working classes.17 The texts cover aspects such as working conditions, ways of clothing, and forms of communicating, and they focus especially on the cries that these costermongers used to advertise their products or services. Mainzer often reproduces these street cries, including both their phrasings and annotations. On this occasion, he inserts ethnomusicological comments, comparing the cries across geographic regions and professional groups, providing historical annotations, and sharing his idea of music as a mirror of popular creativity. In the sketch “Paris Street Cries” (“Les cris de Paris”, 1841), Mainzer describes the costermongers’ cries as a form of music “created by necessity” (Mainzer 1841: 315) and “the indispensable organ of the proletariat” (Mainzer 1841), and makes particular mention of the political and social context of this type of popular musical expression. His dignifying assessment that “street cries have a lot to do with folk melodies” (Mainzer 1841) and must be classified as “the people’s invention” which “bears the stamp of its unmistakable originality” (Mainzer 1841) contrasts with Böhl de Faber’s and Herder’s perception of the dulled urban lower classes. Instead, it reveals appreciation and nostalgia for a pre-industrial world of creative craftsmanship that was increasingly threatened by processes of mass production.18 In terms of originality and creativity, Mainzer considers the female fishmonger (“La marchande de poisson”) to be among the most outstanding singing advertisers: “The original character of the fishmongers is not badly reflected in the melodies of their invention or rather in the way they sing them” (Mainzer 1842: 310). To “study the fishmonger from a musical point of view” (Mainzer 1842.: 308), he recommends following her on her street tours, where the observer may perceive a vast variety of street cries depending on the sorts of fish offered that particular day (which are all advertised with a distinct wording and melody). Mainzer copies texts and annotations of some of these cries, and verbally portrays the “abrupt transition from chest tone to head tone”, which in his view provides the vending cries with a particularly memorable “savage” sound (“sons […] sauvages”) (Mainzer 1842: 311). In his section on the fishmongers, Mainzer also establishes historical links. Much in line with the mythological thinking of his time, he recounts a vendor’s cry from the writings of Clément Janequin (c. 1485–1558), one of the most famous composers of the French Renaissance, and draws parallels between the historical source and his observations of contemporary street advertising practices.
Adolf Glassbrenner was a (mostly) Berlin-based journalist and satirist. Born in 1810 as a tailor’s son, in the late 1820s he started writing political essays for humorous periodicals and newspapers, such as Berliner Eulenspiegel (1829–1830) and Vossische Zeitung (1721–1934) (Heinrich-Jost 1980, 25-33). In 1831, Glassbrenner was granted permission to publish his own monthly, Berliner Don Quixote, which was censored two years later due to its scathing criticism of the aristocracy (Heinrich-Jost 1980: 36). Possibly to avoid censorship, in his subsequent publications, Berlin wie es ist und – trinkt (1832–1845) and Buntes Berlin (1837–1853), Glassbrenner primarily focused on portraying the circumstances and speaking modes of urban artisans and small traders.
Much like Joseph Mainzer, Glassbrenner was a devout democrat and republican, standing out among other contemporary folkloristic writers for his uses of folkloristic material as a “vehicle for social criticism” (Morris-Keitel 1995: 141). With his humorous-satirical depictions of Berlin life, he aimed to stimulate societal reflection among all socio-economic groups, and critics have claimed that his texts were favourably received by significant segments of various social classes (Morris-Keitel 1995: 142; Heinrich-Jost 1980: 273). On the one hand, Glassbrenner attempted to raise awareness among the progressive bourgeoisie about the lower classes’ readiness to live in a democratic society and to win his readers over as campaigners for political and social reforms (Morris-Keitel 1995: 272). On the other hand, he intended his writings to be accessible to individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds. With his at once amusing and dignified representations of the Berlin working classes, he not only provided politically engaging entertainment but also aimed to further strengthen their critical powers to challenge the contemporary social system (Heinrich-Jost 1980: 272-273).
Despite Glassbrenner’s democratic-republican attitude and his vision of the working classes taking part in politics, he failed to fully acknowledge the challenges caused by modern industrialization and capitalism (Briese 2010). Like Joseph Mainzer and many other folklorists of the time, he held a nostalgic view of an urban economy embodied by artisans and small retailers and largely neglected the social ramifications of mass production processes (Briese 2010).19 Correspondingly, Glassbrenner’s characters are typically portrayed as free from feudal or bourgeois formality, with modes of communication that have “not yet been stilted or muffled by the conventions and etiquette of a standardized language” (Morris-Keitel 1995: 141). As a sort of homage to the linguistic wittiness of Berlin’s lower classes, Glassbrenner frequently reproduced dialectal speech, and he is recognized as one of the first authors to capture the Berlin dialect in written form (Briese 2010). In contrast to conservative-oriented folklorists such as Böhl de Faber, Glassbrenner sees the verbal unpretentiousness and “natural wit” of the urban underprivileged as a prerequisite for accessing their critical faculties to effect social change (Morris-Keitel 1995: 141). Taken from the thirteenth instalment of the 32-part serial Berlin, wie es ist und – trinkt (1832–1850), the following example illustrates this understanding: “We can’t really judge that […]. We are people who don’t even speak High German” (Glassbrenner 1842: 16), says a newspaper reader to a fellow reader, who retorts with a sense of pride and dignity: “That’s why you can have more intellect and spirit than some people who have had it all drilled into them!” (Glassbrenner 1842: 16).
While Cecilia Böhl de Faber’s characters tend to happily embrace their dependence within a God-given and hierarchically organized structure, Glassbrenner typically portrayed the popular classes with a history and consciousness of their own and a rather subversive attitude – “mature enough for participation in a democratic society” (Morris-Keitel 1995: 117). In the second instalment of Berlin, wie es ist und – trinkt, for instance, the group of female costermongers is represented as financially self-sufficient and reluctant to take a subordinate position vis-à-vis their better-off clients (Morris-Keitel 1995: 139). According to Glassbrenner, both stationary and mobile costermonger women were united by their pride and quick tongue, which caused the slightest criticism of their commodities to produce a “Shakespearean humor that rushes out of their sharp-witted lips” (Glassbrenner 1845a: 1-2). The ability to observe, interpret, and cater to the preferences of the middle and upper classes was a specific social skill of the costermonger women, which they used to enhance their credibility with potential clients. “Since they know well that the incoming bourgeois women and their maidservants have confidence in everybody but in peasant women and costermongers, they imitate them in dress and manners, act like them, and only go back to their own selves […] when they are insulted” (Glassbrenner 1845a: 4-5). Glassbrenner’s portrayal emphasizes the saleswomens’ ability to analyse social expectations and behaviours, and adopt other social roles to transcend their class background. A subsequent chapter in Berlin, wie es ist und – trinkt similarly emphasizes the urban working classes’ social skills of self-empowerment and their sense of honour. The sketch on the Berlin wood hewers (number 3) features a humorous dialogue in which the labourer argues with his patron and even mocks him. When the patron refuses to give a tip, the hewer rushes out of the house, slamming the door in his face. When the patron follows him to complain, the hewer proudly answers that it was too late to pay him an additional tip at this point: “I won’t take any beer money from anyone or anything! No. In the end, anyone could come and give me beer money!” (Glassbrenner 1845b: 18) This scene again exemplifies Glassbrenner’s approach to giving entertaining descriptions of Berlin’s lower classes while pushing a specific political and social agenda: he endows his characters with linguistic and mental wit, and thus demonstrates to his socially diverse reading public that the working classes are ready for social empowerment and participation.
With the expansion of the commercial press from the early nineteenth century, editors and authors started addressing their audience’s interest in folkloristic materials and themes, acting as a bridge between the professionalizing field of folklore studies and a massifying print culture. As a result, middle-class literary and general interest magazines, along with daily newspapers, disseminated ancient and contemporary folk poetry, tales and songs, with their corresponding scholarly commentaries, as well as semi-fictional descriptions of popular festivals and dances, dietary and storytelling practices, beliefs, rituals, and clothing habits. This article has examined various periodical forms of folkloristic writing (scholarly-philosophical texts, didactic-entertaining sketches, and serial novels) published by three authors from different social and geographical backgrounds. It has focused on the range of worldviews associated with public-oriented folkloristic inquiry, connecting with the idea of knowledge production as being tied to the establishment of civil/bourgeois society and the corresponding narratives of the modern social world (Daum 2009).
The examination of Cecilia Böhl de Faber’s, Joseph Mainzer’s, and Adolf Glassbrenner’s folkloristic writings has shown us that authors from Seville to Berlin used similar ways to spread folkloristic knowledge in market-oriented media and, in this context, exoticize and aestheticize the ostensibly “authentic” traditions of “the folk” in contrast to the “alienating” and “artificial” customs of middle-class civilization. However, their view of the lower classes’ role within the social structure differed significantly, as did their views on which social groups unmistakably belonged to “the people”. Cecilia Böhl de Faber’s periodical sketches and serial novels reveal her rigid adherence to feudal values and the denial of socio-economic issues, thus promoting the understanding of folklore as a manifestation of ethnic uniqueness and a means to restoring old orders. According to David Hopkin (2012: 373-379), this folkloristic perspective was frequently represented by members of the rural elites who fought to preserve old political hierarchies they believed were rooted in agrarian systems and linked to local values and institutions. In contrast to Böhl de Faber, Mainzer’s and Glassbrenner’s writings for journals and serials popularized the liberating potential of folkloristic activity. Both authors considered the “unaffectedness” of the people (in particular, the urban labor classes) and the strengthening of their historical, class-related consciousness as a precondition to a democratic-republican transition. To some extent, therefore, they combined the Herderian perception of the people’s “authenticity” with the idea of “civic nationalism”, which entails the social and political empowerment of the lower classes (Hopkin 2012: 373-379). Bearing in mind the importance of mass media in enforcing collective conceptions of reality and political identity (Anderson 1983), the folkloristic texts addressed in this article demonstrate how specific constructions of “the people” disseminated in periodical literature might have played a role in legitimizing political and cultural narratives and policies. Accordingly, by looking at the connections between folkloristic inquiry and the commercializing press, this article proposes new perspectives on the folkloristic movement as a public middle-class enterprise and the diverse social and political dimensions of nineteenth-century folkloristic inquiry.
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1 Folkloristic inquiry systematized and professionalized in the course of the nineteenth century, among other things, in the context of the numerous newly founded lay and specialist societies, such as the Académie Celtique (established in 1804), the Société des Antiquaires de France (established in 1814), the Antiquarian Society in Zurich (formed in 1832), the Odesa Society of History and Antiquities (established in 1839), and the Cambridge Antiquarian Society (founded in 1840). On the diverse currents of antiquarian-folkloristic-anthropological thought in Europe from the sixteenth to the twentieth century, see Cocchiara (1981).
2 For demographic, political, and economic reasons, these changes varied from place to place. For specifics of print markets in England, Germany, and France around 1840, see Boening (2004).
3 On the English and French reading audiences of that time, see Allen (1981) and Altick (1957). On the consolidation of the folklore movement in different geographical and political contexts, see, e.g., O’Halloran (2012); Baycroft; Hopkin (2012); Bendix (1997). See also note 1.
4 See the listing of social and folkloristic sketches in French-, German-, and English-language periodicals, serials, and anthologies provided by Lauster (2007: 329-337).
5 The article is a result of the research project Dissecting Society. Nineteenth-Century Sociographic Journalism and the Formation of Ethnographic and Sociological Knowledge. Funded by the European Research Council, the project is carried out at the department of European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis at the Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich.
6 German, Spanish, and French quotes have been translated by the author.
7 See, for instance, the illustrator George Cruikshank’s depictions of the London lower classes (especially women) and their spaces “as degenerate and immoral” (Helmreich 1996).
8 On Herder’s concept of natural poetry and its influence on folkloristic inquiry, see Bendix (1997: 34-45).
9 See, on these authors, e.g., van Genepp (1926) and Weber (1966).
10 La gaviota and other prose writings by Fernán Caballero were, according to a critic in The Edinburgh Review, “more than sufficiently recognized by the literary authorities of Madrid and Seville, and received a due share of recognition at Paris and Berlin” (Anonymous 1861). In 1859, La gaviota appeared in German (Georg Westermann). In 1867, it was published for an English-speaking readership in London (Richard Bentley).
11 The trope of interclass (love) relationships is a frequently used device to describe cultural idiosyncrasies from the perspective of the middle-class readership.
12 It has been proven from her letters and notes that Böhl de Faber, while living in the countryside outside Seville in the 1820s, meticulously documented folk sayings, anecdotes, fairy tales, and other observations. Likewise, she called on friends and relatives to collect folk traditions. See Amores (2001: 37–50).
13 During her lifetime, Cecilia Böhl de Faber had already achieved international recognition as a folklorist and author. According to a contemporary Edinburgh Review critic, “her descriptive powers are of the highest order” (Anonymous 1861: 129). The historian and writer Antoine de Latour (1808–1881) disseminated her work in French literary journals (Bruña Cuevas 2013), and Ferdinand Wolf (1796–1866), a scholar of Romance literature at the University of Vienna, corresponded with Böhl de Faber, informing her that her work had been widely recognized by folklorists and mythologists from the German-speaking countries, including the Grimm brothers (Amores 2001: 73). Wolf also prepared an inventory of the ballads and poems published in Böhl de Faber’s diverse writings (Beiträge zur spanischen Volkspoesie aus den Werken Fernán Caballero’s, 1859). More than a century later, another Romance literature expert, Maxime Chevalier, took stock of the folkloristic items gathered by Böhl de Faber, concluding that 84 of them were taken from the lore of the people (Chevalier 1978).
14 In the prologue to the second part of his collection Volkslieder (1797), Herder wrote: “Volk does not mean the rabble on the streets. Who never sing or write poetry, but shriek and mutilate.” (“Volk heißt nicht der Pöbel auf den Gassen. Der singt und dichtet niemals, sondern schreit und verstümmelt.”) (Herder 1871: 70)
15 In England, besides publishing his best-known work Singing for the Million. A Practical Course of Music Instruction (London 1841), Mainzer started editing his own music journals, launching The Musical Athenaeum in 1842 (which was abandoned after four volumes) and Mainzer’s Musical Times and Singing Class Circular; a journal of literature, criticism and intelligence connected with the art, and the advocate of popular musical instruction in 1844, which was taken over in the same year by the publisher Alfred Novello and renamed The Musical Times. Today, The Musical Times is one of the leading journals in this field and Britain’s longest running music journal (Manz 2013: 43-44).
16 This assumption was shared by many contemporary folklorists who focused on collecting popular songs and tales from peripheral areas (Stocking 1991: 53-56).
17 A very similar perspective on urban artisans and street traders can be seen in the far better known and almost contemporaneous series “Labour and the Poor” (Morning Chronicle, 1849–1850) written by Henry Mayhew (1812–1887).
18 In her examination of verbal and visual representations of street traders and their cries, Aimée Boutin (2015) has also highlighted the tensions between the rather bourgeois-conservative perception of street cries as rabble-rousing and disturbing on the one hand and their perception as original and creative on the other.
19 Certainly, Berlin, which had roughly 250,000 inhabitants in 1835 (Heinrich-Jost 1980: 55), was still much characterized by a rural-artisan economy.