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Simplicissimus ........................................ The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies

Rebecca Grzyb Karl Aspelund Cody Dales Benjamin Lopez Barba Rick Wolthusen Leib Celnik Florian Hase Ernest J. Doherty Ailie Kerr Emerson Kerwin Nick Mimms Kevin Hong Vince Guo Nancy Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Neil Sama Mammadova Lane Erickson Natalia Moreno William Greenlaw

Editor-in-Chief Deputy Editor-in-Chief Founder Art Director Co-Head German Editor Co-Head German Editor German German & Treasurer Head Scandinavian Editor Scandinavia Scandinavia Translator General Editor General Editor General Editor General Editor Illustrator Illustrator

Simplicissimus: The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies reviews undergraduate essays, poetry, prose, and art about Germanic topics from Harvard College. Simplicissimus publishes both a print and online edition biannually for review by the greater Germanic community at Harvard and other universities. Simplicissimus will review all submissions anonymously. All submissions and other inquiries may be sent to simplicissimus.submit@gmail.com. Submissions and inquiries may also be mailed to: Simplicissimus: The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies, Box 77, 59 Shepard Street, Cambridge, MA 02138. Additonal information may be found online both at www.hcs.harvard.edu/simplicissimus and also at www.facebook.com/harvardsimpl No part of this journal may be reproduced without the express consent of Simplicissimus. The Harvard name is a trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College and is used by permission of Harvard University. Simplicissimus: The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies is a registered and official student group at Harvard College. Printed in the Dutch Mediaeval typeface, licensed through Canada Type. Planewalker typeface by Neale Davidson. Simplicissimus: The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies Volume 3, Issue 1 | Boston: Boston Business Printing, July 2015 ISSN 2332-4783 (Print) | ISSN 2332-4791 (Online)

Editor’s Note Dear Reader, It was a pleasure working closely with Simpl’s founder Cody Dales on the fifth issue of Simplicissimus: The Harvard College Journal of Germanic Studies. This issue is more whimsical than those past, providing you with a chance to enjoy some of the more playful and lesser known aspects of Germanic studies. I am honored that Cody has entrusted me with the responsibility of leading our team of editors this fall. As our readership continues to grow, we at Simpl devote a great deal of time reflecting on the mission of our journal and its continued success. In the journal’s name, we promise to publish works on so-called ‘Germanic studies.’ But what does that mean? In previous issues, we have published works from various academic fields - e.g. the humanities, social sciences, and computer science. Germanic studies reflects an appreciation for Germanic history, culture, language, and art. It is thus an interdisciplinary field, which our journal aims to represent each semester. We embrace all Germanic aspects in an effort to provide our readers with a complete picture and understanding of what Germanic is. I look forward to working with our editors and new members in the coming months. As we begin a new chapter in the life of Simpl, our readers can expect to see a greater online presence. Of course, this issue would not have been possible without the financial support of the Harvard Undergraduate Council, Department of Germanic Languages and Literatures, the Office for the Arts, Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, the Harvard Foundation, our local advertisers, and our subscribers. On behalf of Simpl, I thank you for your continued support in our mission to support Germanic studies in the U.S. and abroad. I must also thank Mr. JanDaem de Langen and Ms. Renate Kuivenhoven for their help with the Frisian translation of Mr. Kramer’s interview. I would like to congratulate Cody Dales on the success of Simpl and his graduation from Harvard College. We wish you continued success! I would also like to thank my Deputy Editor-in-Chief Karl Aspelund for his contributions to this issue - namely, his delightful propensity to share his knowledge of Icelandic studies. In the following pages, you will find the most curious treasures. I hope that you enjoy this special summer edition of Simpl with a focus on Germanic mythology, folklore, and legends. Yours, Rebecca Grzyb

Contents German 12

Friedrich Hölderlin, “Remembrance” and “Nature and Art” Translated by Maxwell Phillips

“Thoughts on the Way Home after a Talk by Yoko Tawada” by Reed McConnell

A “Germany of Yesterday” at the World of Tomorrow by Nick Ackert

Netherlands

Scandinavia

Interview with Johannes Kramer, Frisian Provincial Executive With Cody Dales and Simpl Staff

“Born of Cold and Winter Air” Early Ice Queens by Ali Zimmerman

Three Dutch Poems on Death: “Epitaph of P.C. Hooft,” “Epitaph for Thorbecke” “Death the Redeemer” Translated by Cody Dales

Illustrations Barbarossa, the Brothers Grimm Cover Art Laila Virgo-Carter Benjamin Lopez Barba The Lorelei, The Midgard Serpent, The Tin Soldier, The Little Mermaid Natalia Moreno

Tannhäuser Barra Peak

The Jelling Stones, The Ice Queen Layout and Design Charlie Caplan Benjamin Lopez Barba and Cody Dales

Necropants, a collaboration with Crunch by Ailie Kerr, art by Benjamin Lopez Barba

The Brothers Grimm of Iceland: Jón Árnason and Magnús Grímsson by Karl Aspelund

s “Barbarossa” by Laila Virgo-Carter

German

Hölderlin: Remembrance, Nature and Art Maxwell Phillips Andenken

Remembrance

Der Nordost wehet, Der liebste unter den Winden Mir, weil er feurigen Geist Und gute Fahrt verheißet den Schiffern. Geh aber nun und grüße Die schöne Garonne, Und die Gärten von Bourdeaux Dort, wo am scharfen Ufer Hingehet der Steg und in den Strom Tief fällt der Bach, darüber aber Hinschauet ein edel Paar Von Eichen und Silberpappeln;

The Northeasterly blows, Most dear of winds to Me, for it augurs a fiery spirit And good journey to sailors. But go now and greet The beautiful Garonne, And there the gardens of Bourdeaux, Where on the sharp shore The jetty protrudes, and the stream Joins deeper currents; but from above Peers down a married pair Of oaks and white poplars.

Noch denket das mir wohl und wie Die breiten Gipfel neiget Der Ulmwald, über die Mühl’, Im Hofe aber wächset ein Feigenbaum. An Feiertagen gehn Die braunen Frauen daselbst Auf seidnen Boden, Zur Märzenzeit, Wenn gleich ist Nacht und Tag, Und über langsamen Stegen, Von goldenen Träumen schwer, Einwiegende Lüfte ziehen.

I think back on all this still - and how The broad peaks bend towards The elm forest, above the Mill, In the courtyard though a fig tree grows. On holidays the brown wives Walk there on Silky floors, In Marchtime, When night and day are even, And over unhurried bridges, Heavy with golden dreams, Lulling breezes waft.

“The Lorelei” by Natalia Moreno

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The Little Mermaidâ&#x20AC;? by Natalia Moreno 14

Es reiche aber, Des dunkeln Lichtes voll, Mir einer den duftenden Becher, Damit ich ruhen möge; denn süß Wär’ unter Schatten der Schlummer. Nicht ist es gut, Seellos von sterblichen Gedanken zu sein. Doch gut Ist ein Gespräch und zu sagen Des Herzens Meinung, zu hören viel Von Tagen der Lieb’, Und Taten, welche geschehen.

But I am given, Full of dark light, The redolent chalice, That I might rest; for sweet It would be to slumber under the shadows. It is not good From mortal thoughts to Become soulless. Yet good Is conversation and to speak The heart’s sentiment, to hear much Of times of love, And deeds of days gone.

Wo aber sind die Freunde? Bellarmin Mit dem Gefährten? Mancher Trägt Scheue, an die Quelle zu gehn; Es beginnst nämlich der Reichtum Im Meere. Sie, Wie Maler, bringen zusammen Das Schöne der Erd’ und verschmähn Den geflügelten Krieg nicht, und Zu wohnen einsam, jahrelang, unter Dem entlaubten Mast, Wo nicht die Nacht durchglänzen Die Feiertage der Stadt, Und Saitenspiel und eingeborener Tanz nicht.

But where are those friends? Bellarmin With his companions? Some Are shy to pursue the source; Riches begin, namely, In the sea. They, Like painters, bring together The splendors of the Earth and disdain Not the war of sails, nor To live years alone under A bare mast, Where the city’s festivals Don’t illuminate the night, Nor the plucked lyre, nor the familiar dance.

Nun aber sind zu Indiern Die Männer gegangen, Dort an der luftigen Spitz’ An Traubenbergen, wo herab Die Dordogne kommt, Und zusammen mit der prächtigen Garonne meerbreit Ausgehet der Strom. Es nehmet aber Und gibt Gedächtnis die See, Und die Lieb’ auch heftet fleißig die Augen, Was bleibet aber, stiften die Dichter.

But now these men are gone To the Indies, There at the breezy summit, On the grape-bearing mountains, whence The Dordogne runs And joins the noble Garonne, wide as an ocean, Running out as a single current. But the sea Takes and gives remembrance, And love busily tacks its course in our eyes; But the poets have founded what remains.

Natur und Kunst oder Saturn und Jupiter Du waltest hoch am Tag und es blühet dein Gesetz, du hältst die Waage, Saturnus Sohn! Und teilst die Los’ und ruhest froh im Ruhm der unsterblichen Herrscherkünste. Doch in den Abgrund, sagen die Sänger sich, Habst du den heilgen Vater, den eignen, einst Verwiesen und es jammre drunten, Da, wo die Wilden vor dir mit Recht sind, Schuldlos der Gott der goldenen Zeit schon längst: Einst mühelos, und größer wie du, wenn schon Er kein Gebot aussprach und ihn der Sterblichen keiner mit Namen nannte. Herab denn! oder schäme des Danks dich nicht! Und willst du bleiben, diene dem Älteren, Und gönn es ihm, daß ihn vor Allen, Götter und Menschen, der Sänger nenne! Denn, wie aus dem Gewölke dein Blitz, so kömmt Von ihm, was dein ist, siehe! so zeugt von ihm, Was du gebeutst, und aus Saturnus Frieden ist jegliche Macht erwachsen. Und hab ich erst am Herzen Lebendiges Gefühlt und dämmert, was du gestaltetest, Und war in ihrer Wiege mir in Wonne die wechselnde Zeit entschlummert: Dann kenn ich dich, Kronion! dann hör ich dich, Den weisen Meister, welcher, wie wir, ein Sohn Der Zeit, Gesetze gibt und, was die Heilige Dämmerung birgt, verkündet.

Nature and Art or Saturn und Jupiter You preside at the height of day, and there thrives Your law: you hold the scales, Son of Saturn! And you, arbiter of the Fates, rest happily In the fame of eternal Kingship. Yet into the abyss, the singers tell, You once hurled your holy Father, your own; And in these depths he mourns, There, where the wild stand justly before you, Innocent, the God of a golden time long passed: Once untroubled, and greater than you yourself, Although he pronounced no commandment and We mortals named him with no titles. Come down, then! or be not ashamed of gratitude! And wish you to stay, then attend to the Ancient One! And grant him that before all Gods and Men the singers should name him! For thus comes from him what is yours, as from The clouds your lightning, Look! thus stems from him The spoils of your sovereignty, and from Saturnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Peace grew this same power. And I have first felt in my heart something Vital, and what you have shaped rests in twilight, And in its cradle the changing Time, to my delight, had begun to slumber: Then I will know you, Son of Kronos! then I will hear you, The wise master, who, like us a son Of time, gives laws and proclaims What is hidden in heavenly twilight.

German

Reed McConnell

“Thoughts on the way home after a talk by Yoko Tawada” Reed McConnell Wer bin ich eigentlich das weiß ich nicht Denke ich als ich aus einem Gebäude schwebe Aus einem Gebäude aus Backstein Aus einem Gebäude am Rand der Welt Voller sogenanntem Wissen.

Who am I anyway I just don’t know I think as I drift out of a building, a Brick building, a Building at the outer reaches of the world Full of so-called knowledge.

Die Luft ist kalt

The air is cold

Dieser Ort voller sogenanntem Wissen Hat mir nur kleine Stücke gegeben— Stücke, die ich nur manchmal mit der Hand fassen kann

This place full of so-called knowledge Has given me only fragments— Fragments that I can rarely even grasp

Ich schwebe zwischen Gebäuden

I drift between buildings

Einmal hat mir ein Mann auf einer Verkehrsinsel gesagt, er wolle Sex mit mir haben Es war dunkel Ich hatte Angst Ich habe ihm mein Handy ins Gesicht geschoben und gedroht, die Polizei anzurufen Aber ich habe nicht geschrien

Once a man on a traffic island tried to get me to have sex with him It was dark I was scared I shoved my cell phone in his face and threatened to call the police But I didn’t scream

Ich schwebe zwischen Gebäuden, zwischen Häusern, zwischen Gedanken, zwischen Kontinenten, zwischen Fischen

I drift between buildings, between houses, between thoughts, between worlds, I sift through reams and reams of teenage dreams

Doch weiß ich, wer ich nicht bin Ich bin keine Schlange Ich bin keine Mutter Ich bin keine Muttersprachlerin Ich bin keine Schlangensprachlerin wie du und Harry Potter Ich rede nur mit Säugetieren

But I know who I’m not I’m no snake I’m no mother I don’t speak my mother tongue And I don’t speak Parseltongue like you and Harry Potter I only talk to mammals

Als ich das Gebäude verlassen habe war es als ob ich eine Gebärmutter hintergelassen hätte, meine Haut wurde sofort rot und rau, so kalt war es, und ich wollte vor Unbehagen schreien und ich erinnerte mich an jedes Mal als die Kälte mir die Hälfte der Sinne geraubt hat und jedes Mal als ich vor Wut geplatzt hat als ob ich ein neugeborenes Baby war oder ein Mutant mit einem Kopf voller Schlangen und ich rede nur mit dem was ich fressen will und ich rede mit dir nur um festzustellen ob ich dich ausnutzen kann und

When I first stepped out of the building it was as if I had left a womb, the cold made my skin red and raw and I wanted to scream with discomfort and I remembered all the times the cold had robbed me of half my senses and all the times I had screamed with anger as if I were a newborn baby or a mutant with a head full of snakes and I only talk to that which I wish to eat and I’m only talking to you to figure out if I can exploit you and

Ich will deine Augen

I want your eyes

Ich will deine Augäpfel

I want your eyeballs

Die sind so rund und schön

They’re so round and beautiful

Ich will deine Augapfelwelten

I want your eyeballworlds

Ich bin Meduse selbst Es hat nichts mit dir zu tun

I am Medusa herself It has nothing to do with you

German

Nick Ackert

A “Germany of Yesterday”at The world of Tomorrow Nick Ackert How Civil Society Shaped American Internationalism During the 1939 New York World’s Fair Great Gatsby, was transformed into beautified, traversable terrain.2 Whalen also decorated his “World of Tomorrow” with massive, ArtDeco monuments hundreds of feet tall, like the famous Trylon and Perisphere that would become universally recognized symbols for the event.

The 1939 World’s Fair and the German Problem: Civil Society vs. Federal Policy Planning for the 1939 New York World’s Fair first began in 1936, and from the outset, it was clear that the entire exposition would be unlike any the world had ever seen. Fair president Grover Whalen sought to create a dazzling international theme park, accessible to the public between April 30, 1939 and October 31, 1940, whose scope and decadence transcended every past precedent. To describe Whalen’s vision as extravagant would be an understatement. His proposals amounted to an unfathomable $2.3 billion spent remorselessly on construction and administration costs during the coattails of the Great Depression.1 The whole Fair concourse spanned some 1,200 acres of stinking marshland where incinerated trash had been laid to rest in hundred-foot piles. This abominable mire, whose ugliness had earned the locale its grim epithet “The Valley of Ashes” in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The

Whalen spent billions to sprout a glorious, futuristic world from a field of rot and ash; political intent lurked behind these aesthetic decisions. The richness of a grand American Fair environment, juxtaposed with the chaos of a Europe threatened by fascism (not to mention an Asia imperiled by Japanese expansion), would demonstrate the strength of America’s own political and economic stability. The Fair’s grandeur was proof that its host country had moved beyond the tragedies incurred by the First World War and the Depression.3 That the Fair would take place during the 150th anniversary year of George Washington’s presidential inauguration served to link America’s economic and political success with

“I know of no artist or designer who could build, paint, or carve anything that would adequately depict either the personalities of the nazi government, Hitler himself, or the type of government he is giving.” - Mayor La Guardia of New York City

the country’s roots as a democracy.4 The Fair was thus a celebration of democracy as well as a consumerist, technological marvel illustrative of America’s own accomplishments.

instruments for the promotion and strengthening of broad international understanding, mutual regard, and good-will.”6 Hull wanted to personally to ensure that the Fair promoted the legitimacy of all global governments, including the Third Reich, to avoid treading on political toes.

Given this pro-democratic, nationalistic backdrop, Whalen and the Fair Corporation were inundated with protest correspondence after extending an invitation of attendance to Nazi Germany in April of 1937. Nongovernmental organizations like the Joint Boycott Council of the American Jewish Congress and Jewish Labor Committee (among other religious, secular, cultural, or political groups averse to either fascism, antiSemitism, or both), were outraged. “A regime which has deprived its citizens of every right guaranteed to free man under the democratic form of government,” the Council complained, had no right to be represented at a celebration of democracy.5

I argue that the controversy over a German protest pavilion at the 1939 World’s Fair elucidates how American citizens, faced with an objectionable foreign policy of federal tolerance for Nazi Germany, were able to change their country’s projected soft-power stance (i.e. its formal approval or disapproval of other countries’ values) towards Hitler’s Third Reich independently of federal authority. In other words, civil society’s protest of Germany’s presence at the Fair helped to shape American foreign policy as overtly anti-fascist, independently of the State Department’s wishes to conceal its criticism of Hitler. While the government wanted American foreign policy to revolve around realpolitik which tolerated a fascist regime to keep the United States out of war, American citizens wanted a morally driven foreign policy which fought against perceived injustice. That the citizens, and not the federal government, shaped AmericanGerman relations can be clearly measured by the worsening of tensions between Germany and the United States from 1937 to 1939, which was a direct product of these anti-German protests surrounding the Fair.

These protests eventually escalated from letters of disapproval to multiple proposals calling for the introduction of an Americanmade, anti-German pavilion which could stand in opposition to whatever exhibition Hitler’s Third Reich had planned for the Fair. But Fair administration officials were concerned that since the US government sponsored the fair, allowing a pavilion which promoted political criticism of contemporary Germany could be misconstrued as the US government openly condemning Hitler’s Reich. Secretary of State Cordell Hull expressed these concerns to Whalen, saying explicitly that the experiences of Fair attendees would hopefully be “powerful

Furthermore, I contend that the decentralization of the American political system, as well as

the honor, for many other states – including China – jealously waited on tenterhooks for an invitation that would never come due to a lack of space. For Germany to spurn the invitation which others begged for would have been perceived as unappreciative by those states who had been denied representation at the event.

the salience of interest-group politics, enabled civil society to challenge and then reshape the federal stance. Members of religious community organizations or secular intellectual and cultural action groups were instrumental in the protest efforts, providing mobilization support, numbers, and political resources to the campaign. With the assistance of lowerlevel politicians, whose participation added publicity to the protests, their voices would be heard by the international community over the official rhetoric of the State Department.

The ensuing public reaction at Germany’s confirmed attendance was unsurprisingly more severe than when the mere possibility of German participation in the event was first entertained a year earlier. Tensions grew especially high as it became apparent that letters alone would not be enough to overrule the decision to allow Germany to attend. Direct action had to be taken to excise National Socialism from “The World of Tomorrow,” and a speech given by Mayor La Guardia of New York roughly a year earlier in 1937 gave protestors just the foundation they needed to escalate their grievances in the form of a protest pavilion.

Archival records suggest that the evolution of a German protest pavilion can be cleanly divided into three temporally contingent but thematically distinct phases, each named eponymously for the title of the exhibition it revolved around constructing:

Phase 1: “The Chamber of Horrors” (Early 1938) Phase 2: “Germany-in-Exile” (Mid 1938) Phase 3: “The Freedom Pavilion” (Early 1939)

La Guardia’s own forceful demeanor often added a sour aftertaste to his brusque opinions, and to contemporizes, he appeared incapable of subtlety. On May 3, 1937, it was to the roaring applause of New York’s Jewish community that La Guardia launched a fiery condemnation of the Nazi Regime at the Hotel Astor before the Women’s Division of the Jewish American Congress in flagrant violation of the federal government’s policy against antagonizing Hitler’s regime.

This analysis will examine the three phases to illustrate how civilian voice materially shaped America’s federally-projected soft power stance throughout each.

The “Chamber of Horrors” | Early 1938 Roughly a year after the protests over the government’s invitation to Germany began, the public received news that Germany accepted this invitation in December of 1937. To great protest from the American people, the Reich had booked 100,000 square feet of space, one of the sixth largest plots available.7 Germany was the last of the Fair’s sixty-two invitees to accept. It is not clear why Germany took so long to accept the invitation, although the growing authoritarianism of the country, which naturally created tensions with America (the global paragon of liberal democracy), is a probable cause. Certainly, Germany could not overtly decline - none of the sixty one other countries invited to attend refused

Calling Hitler a “brown-shirted fanatic” whose regime posed an unacceptable threat to global security in a speech designed to garner political support, La Guardia suggested (perhaps only partly in jest) that Hitler ought to be put on display in a “Chamber of Horrors” pavilion at the Fair to challenge whatever pavilion the Germans were planning to erect.8 Such an antiGerman declaration was a good gambit for La Guardia, whose open hatred of Nazi fascism and anti-Semitism earned him the support of New York’s Jewish voters.9 La Guardia, as an Italian of Jewish heritage himself, was both a representative of the Jewish minority voice and

accepted its Fair invitation a year later, Jewish civilian action groups, in conjunction with Mayor La Guardia himself, decided to transform the “Chamber of Horrors,” into a reality during the early months of 1938. In January, barely a week after Germany’s attendance at the Fair was made official, the New York Evening Post announced that delegates from over 750 Jewish activist groups would meet at the Manhattan Opera House to initiate plans for the “Chamber of Horrors” that La Guardia had proposed.13 Plans for the Chamber had probably been brewing all year, but Germany’s acceptance of the invitation gave activists the impetus they needed to publically launch their initiative. Led by Joseph Tenenbaum and B.C. Vladeck, the Chair and Co-Chair of the Joint Boycott Council, Jewish activists had taken it upon themselves as their righteous mission to neutralize the “virus of Nazi propaganda which has begun to poison our [American] institutions.”14 Their purpose, the article stated, would be to create “a graphic exhibit to pose Germany’s methods of brutality and oppression and its propaganda of incitement” to counteract creeping Nazi influence in America, made all the more threatening by Germany’s pavilion at the Fair where everyday citizens would be exposed to Nazi dogma.15

a politically-invested guardian of their interests. The State Department was horrified at La Guardia’s internationally-published remarks. In a race against time, Secretary Hull attempted serious damage control. The government’s efforts to deliberately include Nazi Germany in the Fair as a sign of tolerance to the Third Reich were at risk of becoming completely moot if Germany withdrew from the event in protest to La Guardia’s comments, and America would have expressed indifference towards an almost universally condemned fascist government for nothing. As the German press relentlessly hammered La Guardia, decrying him as both a “gangster” and a “dirty Jew,” Cordell Hull scurried about with German government elites and offered a frenzy of apologies.10 There was a direct juxtaposition between an aggressive German reaction to the speech, which described American democracy as a façade to disguise the politicking of corrupt elites (the German press referred to La Guardia as “a master New York gangster, an underworld character, a black-mailer . . . a well poisoner, a war profiteer and a Jewish inciter and apostle”) with Hull’s seemingly passive and obsequious regrets that La Guardia had spoken so disrespectfully.11 That America had to apologize to the Reich as if it were an inferior made civilians even more discontent with a Nazi-tolerant American foreign policy, and it arguably made the possibility of a protest pavilion seem more appealing. As the snarky New Yorker noted with zest after La Guardia’s speech:

At the Opera House meeting in support of these delegates was the former American Ambassador to Germany, William E. Dodd, who, like La Guardia, also threw his weight behind the “Chamber of Horrors.” A lover of German culture, Dodd argued that “democracies had to act” because Jews were receiving the worst treatment in Germany that they had ever experienced in a century, and Hitler’s policies were tarnishing the country’s cultural repute.16 His presence as both an ambassador and a Germanophile added legitimacy to grievances that would have otherwise been too overtly strident to be entertained seriously.

“Our mayor’s indiscreet suggestion that the World’s Fair have Hitler in a Chamber of Horrors caused embarrassment to Secretary Hull. Such an exhibit would be in bad taste and well worth a trip to Flushing.” 12 La Guardia’s suggestion thus laid the groundwork for the first opposition pavilion erected by Jewish rights groups as a direct response to whatever Hitler’s government was planning for the event. Discontent transformed from mere, passive letter-writing into actual planning for a counter-Pavilion, setting a bold precedent for the next two years of anti-German protests. Upon finding out that Germany had

Whalen’s Fair Corporation was quick to react. Writing to the Joint Boycott Council of the American Jewish Congress and Jewish Labor Committee, his reply was decisive and reflective of Federal policy; in less than a week he denied

officials to mobilizing political and cultural action committees like the Joint Boycott Council, which America’s freedom of speech and expression had enabled. The “Chamber of Horrors” efforts demonstrated that American internationalism, namely the perception of American feelings towards other countries and their regimes, did not have to originate from the government – it could be expressed by civil society. The critical voices of American citizens had overpowered government attempts to treat Germany as an equal: As discussed in more detail during the next section, by early 1938, the tensions surrounding the “Chamber of Horrors” forced Germany to quit the Fair. It was not federal policy, but the initiatives of civil society, which solidified the United States’ stance as an overtly anti-Nazi country in the press and thereby impacted American foreign relations with Germany.

them space and shut the entire enterprise down: “The rules of the Fair, in fact, would permit nothing of the sort . . . Quite naturally, the nations have accepted the President’s cordial invitation will be treated by the Fair Corporation without distinction or preference and with equal courtesy. In the same spirit, I must add that it would be altogether unbecoming to our role to permit another exhibitor to erect . . . a building different in character and use from any that our rules permit.” 17 What Whalen dubbed “our role” was really the Fair Corporation’s mediation between the American Government and the outside world within the context of the Fair. Clearly, the “rules of the fair” where not just Whalen’s rules, but rather the implicit understanding between Whalen and the State Department that the Fair itself could do nothing to produce an overture to conflict with the Third Reich.

“Germany in Exile” | Mid-1938

The behavior which typified American democracy in the past, and which would continue to do so well into the future, was on display during the struggle for the Chamber of Horrors as civil protestors called upon both Jewish action committees like the aforementioned Joint Boycott Council to champion their cause. The delegations from these various groups and the pooling of their resources enabled the planning process for the “Chamber of Horrors.” Without their leadership, it is unlikely that the 750 delegates would have been able to assemble effectively, and the project would have ended before it even began. Moreover, the support of La Guardia and Dodd crucially added notoriety to the protests, ensuring the project was hounded closely by the papers.

It all came down to finance - at least that was the official story of why the German government decided to quit the 1939 New York World’s Fair in April 1938, just three months after the proposal for the “Chamber of Horrors” first came to light in early January of that year. Dr. Hans Borchers, the German Consul General, wrote to Whalen and regretted that while the German government was “fully appreciating the important task that the New York World’s Fair 1939, Inc., has set itself through its endeavors to promote a better understanding among the different nations of the world,” German attendance was no longer possible.18 The German ambassador to the United States, Hans H. Dieckhoff, explained that given the exchange rate between American and Germany currency, the German government would lose far too much of its investment when paying for their booth in US dollars.19

Although it never came into reality, the fight for the “Chamber of Horrors” thus speaks great volumes about how civil society impacted American internationalism and the resources it pooled to do so. American citizens had challenged federal foreign policy with every institution of democracy at their disposal, from calling upon local or lower level government

With these tactful excuses, German officials had hoped to withdraw from the Fair without incident. Problematically, Austria would also cease to be represented because of its union with Germany via the Anschluss in 1938, making the German absence all the more conspicuous.20

were the primary vehicles through which civilians sought to erect a “Germany-inExile.” This time, the onus of organizing the protest pavilion fell not in the hands of Jewish rights groups, but rather German-American intellectuals who cared more about ensuring that Germany and its cultural contributions to the arts and sciences were represented at the Fair than about criticizing the fascism of the Third Reich. That this movement was largely secular can probably be attributed to the fact that religious and racial conflicts between Jewish rights activists and the Nazi regime had rendered previous heated rhetoric too controversial to garner government support. A new initiative whose premise was intellectual, rather than racial or religious, offered a less overtly critical image that would hopefully be more palatable to the Fair Corporation, and by extension, the State Department.

Additionally, the press was naturally skeptical of Germany’s official motives and it almost universally blamed the boycott on both Mayor La Guardia’s remarks about Hitler as a worthy centerpiece in a “Chamber of Horrors” (made all the more biting by the Jewish protest attempts to actually create the Chamber). Sales conflicts over helium were also to blame. The United States had a monopoly on helium, and Americans were reluctant to sell it to Germany for fear that it would be used in the Reich’s war efforts.21 The German boycott was not inconspicuous in the slightest. Seeing another opportunity to once again undermine federal tolerance for the German regime and to continue to shape the international perception of the United States as an anti-Nazi country, civilian organizations and local politicians renewed their offensive to erect a German protest pavilion at the World’s Fair – this time in the official German pavilion’s former locale. The idea for a “Germany in Exile,” an American-German exhibit to replace the pavilion of the German government, was first broached by the New York Post on Thursday, April 26, 1938.

Led by the esteemed Gerhart H. Segar, the editor of Neue Volkzeitung (The New People’s Daily), the oldest German Social Democratic periodical in America, a committee of German academics and elites exiled from their homeland would work to erect a pavilion showcasing the best of Germany’s pre-Nazi culture.23 As Seger said to the New York Post in his official announcement of intent, the hope was not to criticize Hitler, but “to preserve the fine old culture of true Germany and to help its present-day representatives now in exile to continue to make their contributions to world art, literature, science and music.”24

“The Post is glad that Adolf Hitler’s Government will be among the missing . . . [but] it would be a pity if Germany, the Germany that has given so much to the world in philosophy, in science, in music, in literature, were not at the Fair . . . The Post proposes that Germany-in-Exile take over the ground allotted to the Hitler regime and show the world what Germany, the Germany that will some day rise again from the ashes of Nazism, gave the world.” 22

Seger himself epitomized the backgrounds of the German-American elites involved in the project; he was formally a politician in the German Reichstag’s committee on foreign relations, but the emergence of Hitler’s fascist regime had forced him into exile in the United States.25 Other members of Seger’s committee, including Dr. Edward Heinmann of the New School of Social Research and Dr. Paul Tillich of the Union Theological Seminary, further typified the intelligentsia who led the initiative.26 Walter Gropius – the initiator of the Bauhaus arts movement and a respected professor of architecture at Harvard, was

As the announcement reveals, protests would continue even after Germany quit the Fair, although this time under the guise of a “Germany-in-Exile,” which sought to ensure that the non- Nazi aspects of German culture were still displayed at the Fair even after Hitler’s Germany had departed. As had been the case with the “Chamber of Horrors,” the decentralized and interest group-oriented facets of American democracy

even invited to design the pavilion facility.27 Seger’s committee was further joined by the American Guild for Cultural Freedom, whose membership was composed of various celebrated German politicians who fled from Nazi oppression.28 The histories and agendas of these figures and organizations are beyond the scope of this analysis, but it is clear their contributions represented how “Germany-inExile” was largely an intellectual and secular initiative.

in an “exile” pavilion whose title altogether divorced them from Hitler’s regime. Moreover, Seger’s public comments were explicitly anti-fascist. “After having lectured in forty-two States of the Union in the last three years,” Seger told the press, “I know that the vast majority of the American people would certainly regard such an exhibition as the representation of the true Germany, which is terrorized today and cannot voice its opinion.”31 By directly calling attention to Nazi political oppression and by distinguishing his exiles as representatives of “true Germany” in his mission statement, Seger implied that Hitler’s Germany was illegitimate. Consequently, civilians unassociated with the German intelligentsia planning the project thereafter interpreted the exhibit as a form of protest. As one letter to the editor in the New York Post commented in response to Seger’s proposal for a “Germanyin-Exile” said:

Although this new movement had little intention of becoming a protest against German fascism, it transformed into one by circumstance, and it was therefore destined to fail from the start. The Fair Corporation seemed to recognize that the symbolism of “Germany-in-Exile,” although certainly less overtly offensive than the bluntly named “Chamber of Horrors,” would still have been a vexing form of criticism to Hitler’s Reich. It is worth noting some of “Germany-in-Exile’s” proponents may have been Jewish, as the records do not reveal the religious affiliations of Seger’s committee members, but this did not impact the secularity of their mission. In his official proposal to the Fair Corporation, Seger wrote that “the work of the committee will be non-sectarian and non-partisan. The intended exhibition will not be antagonistic.”29 But such “non-partisan” neutrality was naturally barred by the premise of the exhibit. Since Germany had rejected its invitation, the idealized, American “Germanyin-Exile” exhibition would be on display for the world to see in the exact same space, conveying overtones of protest. As Sarah F. Brandes, the executive secretary of the aforementioned American Guild for Cultural Freedom, told the press, “[Seger’s] proposal that Germany-in-exile take over the space at the World’s Fair declined by Nazi Germany, is of the utmost significance in its cultural and humanitarian implications.”30 She meant that the Nazis had leased the sixth largest space at the fair – some 100,000 square feet which could support around two million dollars’ worth of cultural assets – that would now be used to propagandize against the Third Reich by putting Germany’s greatest cultural highlights

“All decent people must eventually make a united front against Fascist barbarism or else fall prey to inevitable doom, and I believe that your proposal will pave the way for that great day of awakening.” 32 In the eyes of interested members of the general public, the pavilion was not about ensuring that German culture was still represented in spite of the boycott; it was about critiquing a fascist regime. It was for this very emphasis on antiFascism that Mayor La Guardia, whose hatred of the Nazis would never abate, supported the idea and called the editorial proposing it “the best editorial that was ever published.”33 Sensing that the spirit of “Germany-in-Exile” had turned “antagonistic” as opposed to “protagonistic” as Seger had initially promised, the Fair Corporation never approved the exhibit; there appears to be no archival

record of the Fair’s response to Seger and his committee’s proposal, perhaps indicating that the issue was never responded to. Moreover, “Germany in Exile” died out from both the press and from public memory despite its brief stint in the spotlight in April of 1938. There do not appear to be any references to it after May 1, 1938 in any of the official New York World’s Fair records.

though the federal government wanted to project a different stance.

The “Freedom Pavillion” Nine months of silence followed Seger’s failure, until a mysterious meeting of a nonfederal committee composed of some seventy people brought the idea of protesting Nazism at the Fair back into the limelight. Mayor La Guardia himself selected this eclectic committee from individuals whom the press dubbed as both New York’s “educational, social, and philanthropic leaders” and its “city officials and prominent citizens.”34 He summoned them to a mysterious assembly at the glamorous River Club in downtown New York on the cold Thursday evening of January 12.35 Beforehand, the invitees were told only that their presence was needed to “discuss a matter of high cultural and international importance in connection with the World’s Fair.”36

Still, just as with the attempts of Jewish cultural groups to erect a “Chamber of Horrors,” civil society strove to project its own vision of Germany onto the Fairgrounds despite the worsening of German-American tensions to federal detriment. Seger’s attempts to mobilize German intellectuals reveal how American civilian protests made use of the decentralization and flexibility of American political institutions to advance their causes. Impetus for “Germany-in- Exile” would have died out had Seger not been able to mobilize

“Moreover, Seger’s committee, like political glue, had united different German-American groups by galvanizing their leading intellectual representatives towards a single, concrete cause ... the pavilion”

When they arrived, baffled guests entered an ad-hoc gathering whose purpose was to plan a new, American-made German pavilion at the Fair.37 The meeting was chaired by the esteemed multi-Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Herbert Bayard Swope.38 Swope was a GermanAmerican with a passion for exposing crime and injustice; in the early 1920’s he had relentlessly hounded and exposed the atrocities committed by the Ku Klux Klan – coverage which won him one of his many Pulitzer Prizes.39 Given his passion for, and commitment to, fighting racial hatred, Swope was the natural choice to chair La Guardia’s latest attempt to revive a German protest pavilion.

his committee by reaching out to allies through various German cultural societies and political groups. Moreover, Seger’s committee, like political glue, had united different GermanAmerican groups by galvanizing their leading intellectual representatives towards a single, concrete cause made manifest in an actual structure – the pavilion. That local politicians like Mayor La Guardia had thrown their support behind the project only added further strength by increasing the pavilion’s publicity. Thus did attempts to create a “Germany-in-Exile” have the larger effect of solidifying American internationalism as anti-Nazism through the institutions of American democracy, even

By the time that the meeting adjourned later that evening, its members had come up with a concrete proposal for a new, Americanmade German pavilion. The press claimed that Swope started the meeting by announcing that the grand opening of the Fair was approaching swiftly, and that although most of the world would be depicted at the Fair, German culture still had no form of representation.40 Other than the word of the papers, there do not appear to be archival records outlining the minutes

Yesterday – Germany Tomorrow” while blatantly ignoring the fascist Germany of the present could not be depoliticized. Multiple papers reported repeatedly that the plan was “loaded with dynamite.”45 Like “Germany-inExile” before it, “The Freedom Pavilion” would directly delegitimize Nazism as a form of “true German culture,” not only by its refusal to portray Nazi contributions to German history, but also through its boldness of title. The mention of “Freedom” was a direct attack on the repression of Hitler’s regime.

from this meeting which could suggest how such an eclectic crowd was so swift to act. It is possible, however, that since La Guardia probably only selected individuals whom he knew would be supportive of the proposal, the planning process more efficient. The committee made an official announcement that circulated the press like wildfire the next day: With the help of US $250,000 donated from the New York community, the pavilion could become a reality.41 The press stated that the exhibit, boldly entitled “The Freedom Pavilion,” was designed “to show Americans everything that fell to ashes in Germany as the Nazis rose to power” by depicting “Germany Yesterday – Germany Tomorrow.”42 Like “Germany-in-Exile,” this new “Freedom Pavilion” would display highlights of German art, philosophy, and culture which were banned under Hitler’s regime.

Moreover “Germany-in-Exile” and the “Freedom Pavilion” – both intended to glorify the pre-Nazi culture of the German nation. Therefore, both shared the same polemical nature which had gotten “Germany-in-Exile” (and even the “Chamber of Horrors before it) into trouble. The only difference between the two proposals was related to who pioneered them. German intellectuals spearheaded

“Like ‘Germany-in-Exile,’ this new ‘Freedom Pavilion’ would display highlights of German art, philosophy, and culture which were banned under Hitler’s regime.” Swope presided over a plan that was more elaborate than anything activists had orchestrated previously for either the “Chamber of Horrors” or “Germany-in-Exile.” The “Freedom Pavilion” would encompass a grand total of some 80,000 square feet, dwarfing the exhibitions of several other prominent countries like Czechoslovakia, Brazil, Poland, Sweden, Canada, and Egypt.43 The exhibition plans included a garden overlooking Queen’s bustling Rainbow Avenue, a Viennese café where authentically dressed waiters and an orchestra serviced visitors in style, an art gallery, a hall of science with working German inventions, an exhibition room for the works of German icons like Mann, Einstein, and Freud who were banned by the Nazi regime, and finally, a place for lectures hosted by prominent German thinkers.44

“Germany-in-Exile”, while a mix of German and non-German Americans jointly planned the Freedom Pavilion, judging from the publically released list of the committee members. Timing provides a logical explanation for this difference; Jewish rights activists had already protested with their “Chamber of Horrors” and failed, as had German intellectuals with their “Germany-in-Exile.” The only other remaining protestors were either those Americans who had little affiliation to Germany through cultural heritage or complaints of discrimination, but nevertheless hated fascism, or German Americans uninvolved with any previous protest efforts – the exact kind of people included in Swope’s committee. Due to its inherent criticism of Nazi Germany, the “Freedom Pavilion,” like its predecessors, was met with considerable opposition. Though the press reported that the State Department had deemed the exhibition “acceptable” while

Such a conspicuous, grand exposition of German culture which emphasized “Germany

of the “Freedom Pavilion,” more likely than not, confirms that Whalen had granted the Pavilion space.

the Fair Corporation board evidently voted unanimously to grant the “Freedom Pavilion” space at the Fair, the ensuing criticism from American citizens was so dour that the Fair Corporation vigorously denied that it had ever allocated space for the enterprise.46 As J. C. Holmes, Whalen’s administrative assistant pavilion, wrote to all those who had written in disapproval of the Fair’s decision to entertain the Freedom Pavilion:

Of the three phases of an anti-German protest pavilion’s development, the “Freedom Pavilion” period is by far the most anomalous: If both the State Department and the Fair Corporation approved of the Pavilion’s construction, why did it still fail, and how could it still be representative of civil society’s attempts to challenge federal policy when the State Department actually approved of the idea?

“My dear Sir or Madam [last name] . . . The newspaper article which you saw resulted from a meeting held by an independent group of persons having no direct connection with the New York World’s Fair and I may say for your information that no specific proposal has been made to the Fair Corporation for the erection of a ‘Freedom Pavilion.’” 47

As for why the Pavilion failed, it seems as though American citizens were worried that it would trigger potential backlash from Germany that could threaten America’s own security. Such concerns were not unfounded. Over the past two years, Americans – mostly Jewish rights groups and German-American intellectuals –

It is unclear whether or not this letter was a bold lie; news articles all seemed to report that the

“The 1939 New York World’s Fair was a celebration of democracy - a decadent spectacle that arose from the literal ashes of Flushing Meados in celebration of liberty and justice.” Fair Corporation had actually allotted space for the Pavilion. When the papers indicated that the whole project would be scrapped a month later in February because the committee could not raise sufficient funds or erect the Pavilion in time for the April 30 deadline, they framed Whalen’s announcement of the project’s termination in a way that suggested that Whalen would have embraced the “Freedom Pavilion” had both funds and time permitted him to do so.48 As the papers reported Whalen writing to Swope’s committee:

had been unafraid to overtly criticize Germany. But a lot had changed in two years with respect to Germany’s own strength: Hitler had recently annexed Austria in 1938, and just one month after the bid for the “Freedom Pavilion” fell through, Germany would have enough power to occupy Czechoslovakia. Roughly half a year after that, it would invade Poland to fire the opening shots of World War II. Security concerns were among many of the possible explanations for why the project was never funded. An anxious letter written to Whalen in light of the Freedom Pavilion’s announcement was concerned that the project would not be “conducive to promoting the peace and friendship” with Germany, while another noted that Germany was a “dynamic first-class world power of 80 million able and united people,” implying that upsetting the Reich was far from practical for America’s interests.50 A third letter expressed concern that

“In my judgment it would be ineffective for an exhibition of such public interest to be late in its presentation, and our construction department advises me that it is impossible to complete the construction of the proposed pavilion with its elaborate displays within the time limit.” 49 That the Fair Corporation had assigned its own construction staff to oversee the erection

public figures.

the Pavilion “would offend and provoke the German government more than [America has] already done,” and the rest of the numerous Freedom Pavilion protest letters re-quoted the fears that the Pavilion was a “plan loaded with dynamite” as expressed by the press.52 While the letters vouched other concerns – namely that the Pavilion would be offensive to German culture by attempting to selectively represent German history – the primary fears seemed to concern the detrimental implications for American security if Germany were to react with hostility to the Pavilion.

The Legacy of the Freedom Pavillion: Precedents for the Future The 1939 New York World’s Fair was a celebration of democracy – a decadent spectacle that arose from the literal ashes of Flushing Meadows in celebration of liberty and justice. The overall theme of the Fair, in the minds of politically active members of American civil society, rendered Nazi Germany’s attendance wholly inappropriate. In response, citizens passionately protested Germany’s attendance from 1937-1939 by mobilizing support for the erection of an anti-Nazi pavilion at a government-sponsored event that would challenge the State Department’s hopes of projecting the United States as a nation tolerant of fascist regimes. Thus did the protest pavilion’s development demonstrate how civil society could shape American soft power independently of federal authority. America’s citizens protested through the decentralized institutions and interest-group oriented politics which epitomized American democracy, calling upon political rights action groups, cultural heritage organizations, religious assemblies, action committees, and accessible local politicians. They abided by the long line of precedents which civilian protests before them established, while shaping those for the future of later protests in the United States. Ultimately, Germany was never represented at the Fair, but it remained as a lurking specter, a conspicuously absent bête noire hiding in the background of the Fair pavilions of other nations like Czechoslovakia and Poland as these countries changed their exhibits to reflect the Nazi occupation.53

In regards to the Pavilion still demonstrating civil society’s challenge of federal policy, it is important to consider that although this antiGerman protest was rendered “acceptable” by the State Department, the circumstances did not change how federal policy overall was still relatively tolerant of Nazism. The Americans did not label Germany as an enemy after Hitler annexed Austria, and they would not when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia, Poland, and the Low Countries in the coming months. Hence, Seger’s committee challenged these still-existing policies of federal tolerance until 1941; the committee’s Freedom Pavilion was overtly offensive to Hitler’s Reich and records confirm the idea had been widely circulated and condemned in Germany.52 The bottom line is that La Guardia and Seger’s committee, like the Jewish rights groups and the intellectual organizations before it, still used the institutions specifically afforded to them by the decentralization of American democracy to challenge this federal policy, which did not change simply because the government conceded to one protest pavilion at the Fair. La Guardia and Swope forged on to mobilize the greatest, most elaborate anti-German protest proposal in the history of the 1939 New York World’s Fair, and their capacity to mobilize various prominent city officials and socialites, especially through La Guardia’s connections as mayor, demonstrates how citizens could materially challenge federal goals for American internationalism specifically through interestgroup politics and accessibility of influential

The “Chamber of Horrors,” “Germany-inExile,” and the “Freedom Pavilion” never came to reality, but the history of the protest movements which surrounded them are crucial to our own understanding of the effects of civil society on political discourse. In the same way that modern nongovernmental organizations with no official affiliations to state legislatures are just as important in shaping global politics

as state governments themselves, so too were the nongovernmental movements of American civil society equally crucial in shaping American soft power. As the struggles for all of these antiNazi Pavilions (whether by spearheaded ethnic rights groups, intellectuals, or a combination of both) reveal, Whalen had truly projected an image for a “World of Tomorrow” in the process of preparing for the 1939 New York World’s Fair. He did this not through the Fair’s glamor, optimism, or exhibition of new technology, but rather unintentionally through entertaining and

responding to the dynamic civilian debates which the circumstances surrounding the Fair had inspired. These debates, marked by the constant interaction between civil society and the state, foreshadowed politics of the “future” world that followed Whalen and the people of the 1940’s. This is the world we inhabit now: a world continually marked by the success and prominence of nongovernmental initiatives, international institutions, and civilian objection to government policy.

Endnotes 1. James Mauro, Twilight at the World of Tomorrow: Genius, Madness, Murder, and the 1939 World’s Fair on the Brink of War (New York: Ballantine Books, 2010), xxiii. 2. Ibid., xxiii and xix 3. Marco Duranti, “Utopia, Nostalgia, and World War at the 1939-1940 New York World’s Fair,” Journal of Contemporary History 41, no. 4 (October 2006): 668, accessed October 22, 2014, http://www.jstor. org/stable/30036413. 4. Robert W. Rydell, John E. Findling, and Kimberly D. Pelle, Fair America: World’s Fairs in the United States (Washington: Smithsonian Institution, 2000), 90. 5. Joseph Tenenbaum and B. C. Vladeck to Grover Whalen, October 21, 1936, Box 312, Folder 4, New York World’s Fair 1939-1940. NYPL, New York. 6. Cordell Hull to Grover Whalen, January 20, 1938, Box 1477, Folder 6, New York World’s Fair 19391940, New York Public Library, New York. 7. “Reich belegt 100,000 Quadratfuss für de Ausstellung,” N. Y. Staatzeitung Und Herold (New York), December 31, 1937. 8. “Reich Press Threatens Revenge, Calls LaGuardia ‘A Dirty Jew’,” New York Herald Tribune (New York), March 5, 1937, and “Hull Gives Reich Formal ‘Apology’” New York Times (New York), March 6, 1937. 9. Louis D. Gross to Fiorello La Guardia, January 8, 1937, Box 312, Folder 4, New York World’s Fair 19391940, New York Public Library, New York. This letter from the editor of the Jewish Examiner, which, among other things, thanks La Guardia for his tirade against Hitler’s regime is particularly illustrative. 10. “German Press Attacks on America Cause State Department to Act,” New York Sun (New York), March 11, 1937. 11. “Reich Press Threatens Revenge.” 12. “Of all things” New Yorker (New York), March 13, 1937. 13. “Jews Seek Fair’s Nazi Chamber of Horrors,” New York Evening Journal (New York), January 7, 1938. Ackert, 24 24 14. Joseph Tennenbaum and B. C. Vladeck to Grover Whalen, October 21, 1936. Box 312, Folder 4. New York World’s Fair 1939-1940. New York Public Library, New York. 15. “Jews Seek Fair’s Nazi Chamber of Horrors.” 16. “Hitler Perils Civilization, Dodd Warns,” [paper name cut out] January 14, 1938. 17. “Fair Bars Exhibit of Nazi Horrors,” New York Post (New York), January 13, 1938, and “‘Nazi Chamber of Horrors Barred as Whalen Says Fair Forbids Propaganda,” New York Evening Journal (New York), January 13, 1938, and “Whalen Refuses Space for Attack on Hitler,” New York Herald Tribune (New York), January 13, 1938. 18. “Reprisals on Fair Denied by Reich,” New York Times (New York), April 23, 1938. 19. “Germany Out of World Fair,” New York Herald Tribune (New York), April 27, 1938. 20. Ibid. 21. “Reich Withdraws from World’s Fair,” New York Times (New York), April 27, 1938, and “Why Germany Quit Our Fair,” New York Sun (New York), April 27, 1938. 22. “Germany in Exile at the World’s Fair,” New York Post (New York), April 26, 1938. 23. “German Exiles Organizing for Exhibit at Fair,” New York Post (New York), April 30, 1938. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. Ibid. 27. Ibid.

28. Ibid. 39. Gerhart Seger to J. C. Holmes, May 7, 1938. Box 312, Folder 4. New York World’s Fair 1939 - 1940. NYPL, New York. 30. “German Exiles Organizing for Exhibit at Fair.” 31. “Exiles from Reich Plan Fair Exhibit,” New York Times (New York), May 1, 1938. 32. “So That Old Germany May be Long Remembered,” New York Post (New York), May 10, 1938. 33. “La Guardia Backs Germany-in-Exile Exhibit for Fair,” New York Post (New York), April 29, 1938. 34. “Freedom Pavilion Planned to Celebrate the Pre-Nazi Culture,” New York Times (New York), January 13, 1938, and “World’s Fair ‘Freedom Pavilion’ to Depict Pre-Nazi Germany,” New York Herald Tribute (New York), January 13, 1938. 35. “Freedom Pavilion Planned to Celebrate the Pre-Nazi Culture.” 36. “World’s Fair ‘Freedom Pavilion’ to Depict Pre-Nazi Germany.” 37. “Freedom Pavilion Planned to Celebrate the Pre-Nazi Culture.” 38. “World’s Fair ‘Freedom Pavilion’ to Depict Pre-Nazi Germany.” 39. Roy J. Harris, Jr., Pulitzer’s Gold: Behind the Prize for Public Service Journalism (n.p.: Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007), 131-135. 40. “World’s Fair ‘Freedom Pavilion’ to Depict Pre-Nazi Germany.” 41. “Freedom Pavilion Drive Launched for 250,000,” New York Journal and American (New York), January 13, 1939. 42. “World’s Fair ‘Freedom Pavilion’ to Depict Pre-Nazi Germany.” 43. Whalen to Hull. 44. “Freedom Pavilion Planned to Celebrate the Pre-Nazi Culture.” 45. “Drop German Pavilion Plan,” New York Sun (New York), February 2, 1939. 46. “Freedom Pavilion Planned to Celebrate the Pre-Nazi Culture,” and “World’s Fair ‘Freedom Pavilion’ to Depict Pre-Nazi Germany.” 47. Sydney Waldecker to J. C. Holmes, January 16, 1939, Box 1476, Folder 1, New York World’s Fair 1939 - 1940, NYPL, New York, and Roma Hertzog to J. C. Holmes, January 13, 1939, Box 1476, Folder 1, New York World’s Fair 1939 - 1940, NYPL, New York, and Annette V. Marshall to J. C. Holmes, January 13, 1939, Box 1476, Folder 1, New York World’s Fair 1939-1940, NYPL, New York, and Clarita F. Crosby to J. C. Holmes, January 27, 1939, Folder 1476, Folder 1, New York World’s Fair 1939-1940, NYPL, New York, and Mason, Dr. to J. C. Holmes, May 2, 1939, Box 1476, Folder 1, New York World’s Fair 1939-1940, NYPL, New York. 48. “Drop German Pavilion Plan,” and “Old Germany Exhibit at Fair Cancelled,” New York WorldTelegram (New York), February 2, 1939, and “German Pavilion Plan is Dropped,” New York Sun (New York), February 2, 1939. 49. “Anti-Nazi Show at World’s Fair is Abandoned,” New York Herald Tribune (New York), February 2, 1939. 50. Hertzog to Holmes and Struckmeyer to Holmes. 51. Marhsall to Holmes. 52. “Old Germany Exhibit at Fair Cancelled.” 53. For more on how the pavilions of countries changed throughout World War II, see Duranti, “Utopia, Nostalgia, and World,” and Leah Schulson, “ “The World of Today: The Polish Pavilion at the 19391940 World’s Fairs.” Harvard Tempus 14, no. 2 (Fall 2013): 22-37. For a complete bibliography for Mr. Ackert’s essay, please refer to the Simplicissimus website, to be posted after publication.

Netherlands

Cody Dales and Simpl Staff

Netherlands | Frisian

Interview with Johannes Kramer Provincial Executive, Frisian National Party 1. Mr. Kramer, I would like first to thank

you very much for agreeing to speak with Simplicissimus. As a learner of Dutch and a great fan of the Netherlands, I am extremely excited to talk with you! Now, for most of our readers at Harvard, the Frisian National Party is not something that most are acquainted with, though this is obviously a very important topic for the Netherlands and the EU. What’s the current status of the FNP? Could you tell us a bit about how things are now in Friesland with the FNP, and any big initiatives you currently have? Specifically, I hear that you are calling for a referendum for increased autonomy?

“But in the hearts and minds of the people, in the first place it’s about Friesland.”

De hjoeddeistige status fan de FNP is poerbêst. Wy bin de tredde partij fan Fryslân (nei de lêste gemeenteriedsferkiezings) en in gematigde politike partij yn it midden fan it politike spektrum.

The present state of the FNP is very good. We are the third party of Fryslân (after the last municipal elections) and a moderate political party at the centre of the political spectre.

Alderearst it doel fan de FNP. Wy hawwe as FNP yn wêzen ien doel, nammentlik in Frysker Fryslân realisearje troch mei te dwaan yn it bestjoer op gemeentlik, provinsjaal, wetterskips, lanlik en Europeesk mêd. Dat dogge wy op twa wizen, foar lange termyn en foar de koarte termyn. Foar de lange termyn troch te stribjen nei mear foech en sizzenskip foar de Friezen. Dat kin net op koarte termyn behelle wurde as gefolch fan de hjoeddeistige politike en maatskiplike omstannichheden.

First, FNPs goal. We have one general goal, to create a more Frisian Fryslân by partaking in the government on every level. We maintain two ways to do so, on the long term and on the short term. For the long term by aiming for more power for the Frisians, and giving them more say in the policies. There’s no short way to achieve that in todays political and societal circumstances.

It is wichtich dat wy te’n oansjen fan dit spesifike stribjen goed ferstien wurde. It giet ús net om in ûnôfhinklik Fryslan yn politike sin. It giet ús om in mentaal ûnôfhinklik Fryslân. De wrâld hinget fan ôfhinklikens oan inoar en ûnôfhinklikens fan Fryslan yn de klassike sin is gjin antwurd op de útdagings fan moarn. Wol stribje wy in Fryslân nei wêrfan de ynwenners safolle as mooglik direkte en streekrjochte ynfloed hawwe op harren eigen takomst.

It’s important that we are understood concerning this specific goal. Our intention is not to create an independent Fryslân politically. Our object is a mentally independent Fryslân. The world consists of dependancy and Fryslâns independancy is no solution for tomorrows challenges. Yet, we aim for our Frisian citizens to have as much direct influence as possible on their own future.

De twadde wize wêrop as wy it doel neistribje is troch yn de polityk fan allendei in konstruktive hâlding oan te nimmen wêrtroch wy der foar soargje dat ús ynbring safolle as mooglik draachflak krijt en dertroch omset wurde kin bestjoerlik optreden troch de oerheid. Dit neam ik it bestjoerlik stribjen. Dat betsjut mei respekt foar demokratyske prinsipes en konstruktyf gearwurkje. Om op basis fan it útruiljen fan stânpunten en it sluten fan kompromissen en dertroch it doel foar de langere termyn tichterbij bringe.

The second way for us to achieve our goal is by maintaining a constructive attitude in everyday’s politics, so our input is followed more and there’s more opportunity for it to be acted out politically. This is what I call the governmental goal. This means with respect for democratic principles and cooperating constructively. By exchanging point of views en making compromises we hope to bring the long term goal closer by.

“The world consists of dependancy and Fryslâns independancy is no solution for tomorrows challenges. Yet, we aim for our Frisian citizens to have as much direct influence as possible on their own future.” De FNP hat sa’n 50 riedsleden, 9 wethâlders, 1 boargemaster (dy’t yn Nederlân beneamd wurde op foardracht fan de ried), 4 steateleden (fan de 43) en 1 deputearre. Fierder wurdt de FNP yn de Earste Keamer fertsjintwurdige troch in senator fan de Onafhankelijke Senaatsfractie (OSF). Yn Europeesk ferbân wurkje wy gear mei de Europeeske Frije Alliansje, de EFA, dy’t in eigen fraksje yn it Europeesk Parlemint hat. De FNP hat om de 1400 leden.

The FNP has about 50 councillors, 9 City Council members, 1 Mayor (in The Netherlands they’re appointed by nomination of the Council), 4 Provincial Council members (of 43) and 1 Provincial Executive. Furthermore, the FNP is represented in the Upper House by a senator of the Onafhankelijke Senaatsfractie (Independent Senate group). On the European scale we cooperate with the European Free Alliance, EFA, which is a group of its own in the European Parliament. The FNP has about 1400 members.

Troch de diskusje op lanlik nivo oer it mooglik opheffen fan de provinsjes, ien fan de foarnimmens fan it sittende kabinet Rutte II, ûntstie binnen de FNP oanstriid om der tsjin yn te gean.

Because of the national discussion on the possibility of abrogating the Dutch provinces, one of the goals of the Rutte II cabinet, that is operational today, the FNP developed an urge to go against all that.

Op himsels binne wy net tefreden mei it foech en de posysje fan de provinsjes yn it Nederlânske steatsbestel, mar wolle dizze krekt fuortsterkje en net ôfskaffe. Deroer is in aparte wurkgroep gear west en dy hat in dokumint makke wêryn oanjûn wurdt dat op termyn de provinsje Fryslân mear foech krije moat en de middels (benammen finansjele en juridyske) om dat foech wier meitsje te

We’re not satisfied with the power and position of the provinces in the Dutch States order, but we want to empower this instead of stopping it. A separate taskforce has thought about this and wrote a document that says that in the future Fryslân should get more say in things and needs the means (both financial and legal) to achieve this.

kinnen. It wurdt autonomy wurdt derby al neamd, mar is yn it ferkiezingsprogram foar de kommende ferkiezings foar Provinsjale Steaten skrast en ferfongen troch sizzenskip. It begryp autonomy soarget foar in protte misbegryp by de kiezers wertroch ús eigenlike punt, mear sizzenskip, ferlern giet.

The word autonomy is already mentioned, but was cut from the election programme for the upcoming elections of the Provincial Council en replaced by right of say. The household word autonomy receives a lot of misunderstanding from our voters, while we just aim for more say.

Foar it kommende ferkiezingsprogram is dat stribjen fertaalt nei it hâlden fan in referindum oer de sprieding en tagonklikens fan de (regionale) sikenhuzen, de folkshusfestingkooperaasjes en de soarchynstelllings (ferpleech- en âldereintehuzen).

“...we don’t ask for autonomy, but for devolution, a real devolution.” Therefore, a referendum on the spread and the accessibility of the (local) hospitals, health care institutions and housing cooperations is included in the upcoming election programme.

De Nederlanske Steat desintralisearret wol foech, mar dat bin feitlik ferkapte besuniging. No is bygelyks in grutte desintralisaasje operaasje oan de gong om de Soarch fan it Ryk en de provinsje oer te dragen nei de gemeenten. Dat bart mei in 20% koarting op it budzjet. Gemeenten hawwe kwalik eigen belestingromte en mooglikheden om in eventueel tekoart op te fangen of oan te suverjen. Boppedat is de eigen beliedsmjittige romte om of te wiken minimaal. Eltse ôfwiking liedt ta fragen yn de Twadde Keamer en media reboelje, sels as dy ôfwiking plakfynt binnen de mooglikheden fan de Wet. Dus koart sein: Den Haag desintralisearret wol de problemen, mar net de oplossingen. De FNP wol in echte desintralisaasje, dus fan it foech en de middels om dat foech fatsoenlik útoefenje te kinnen. Wy soene datoangeande it foech hawwe wolle oangeande - soarch, ûnderwiis, folkshúsfesting en romtelike oardering. In sitewaasje dy’t in yn ferskate Europeeske lannen frij normaal is.

The Dutch State devolves authority, but in fact those are hidden financial cuts. For example, a big devolution is going on right now, to move the authority and tasks in health care from the State and the Provinces to the municipalities. And there’s a 20% cut on the budget. The municipalities have very little possibilities to fill financial gaps where it may be needed. And their own policy doesn’t offer much financial flexibility either. Every deviation leads to questions in the House of Representatives en to unrest in the media, even if the deviation is within the norms of the Law. To cut it short: The Hague decentralises the problems, but not the solutions. The FNP wants a real devolution, so of the authority and of the means to perform the authority thoroughly. Therefore, we’d like the authority on the field of health care, housing, education and environmental planning. A situation that is quite normal in various European countries.

Dus wy freegje net om autonomy, mar om desintralisaasje, in echte desintralisaasje (wat de Britten devolution neame).

2. Though there are a number of movements in

So, we don’t ask for autonomy but for devolution, a real devolution.

Europe at the moment that are advocating either increased autonomy or independence at the moment, some seem to be more economically driven and some more culturally. With your goal of holding a referendum soon, why should Frisians vote for more autonomy? Are there particular economic benefits autonomy would offer, or do you see the cause as mainly cultural?

Ik ha hjirboppe al oanjûn dat wy gjin referindum oer autonomy hawwe wolle, mar oer mear sizzenskip oangeande soarch (sikehuzen en soarchynstellings). De reden derfoar is dat wy tinke dat de provinsje it demokratyske tekoart opfolle kin tusken de Nederlânske Steat en de mienskip.

As mentioned before, we don’t want a referendum on autonomy, but on more say concerning health care (hospitals and care institutions). The reason is that we believe that the Province can build a bridge between the Dutch State and society, and fill the democatic gaps along the way.

It Nederlânske demokratyske systeem hat op dit stuit in grut demokratysk tekoart. De tradisjonele politike partijen, dy’t basearre wiene op de sosjale ferpyldering (verzuiling) fan de Nederlânske maatskippij, ferlieze harren grip op de achterban mei as gefolgen dat de kiezer op e kletter slein is en eltse ferkiezing in lotterij. De ynfloed fan de boarger op syn lokale en regionale oerheid wurdt hieltyd lytser en hieltyd sintraler oanstjoerd. Skaalfergrutting en privatisearring yn soarch, ûnderwiis en folkshúsfesting (eartiids in kreftich symboal fan boargerpartisipaasje) soargje derfoar dat de ynfloed fan de boarger byneed nul is. De Friezen soene dus yn us fisy stimme moatte foar mear sizzenskip op en oer de elemintêre soarch. Dus it is net sasear ekonomysk of kultureel, mar mear soarch en noed oer (it behâld fan) de wolfeartssteat en de sizzenskip deroer.

The Dutch democratic system is short on democracy at this point. The traditional political parties, which are based on social deviation of Dutch society, are losing their grip on their followers, so voters are confused and every election results in a lottery. The citizens influence on their local and regional governments is getting smaller all the time and controlled more and more from a central point.

“The Dutch democratic system is short on democracy at this point. the traditional political parties, which are based on social deviation

3. Most of our readers are very familiar with the current movements in Scotland and Catalonia. Although I understand that you are only seeking more autonomy for Friesland, do you think that the results of the recent Scottish Independence Referendum or the current situation in Catalonia are having an effect on the FNP’s bid for greater autonomy for Friesland?

of dutch society, are losing their grip

Wis, it referindum yn Skotlân hat yn Fryslân en ek yn Nederlân de FNP midden yn de skynwerper set omdat in groep FNP’rs nei Skotlân ta gien is om der it referindum mei te meitsjen. Benammen dat it referindum sa posityf wie (freedsum en demokratysk) helpt ek it bredere doel fan de FNP foarút: stadichoan mear sizzenskip foar Fryslân beskreppe. Dat pleatst it stribjen fan de FNP yn in breder Europeesk ramt. Datoangeande falt net sasear de unikens fan de FNP op binnen Nederlânsk perspektyf mar wurde de bredere Europeeske dwersferbinings tusken Europeeske minderheidsregio’s mear en better sichtber.

Sure, the referendum in Scotland put the FNP in Fryslân and in The Netherlands in the spotlight, because a group of FNP members attended that referendum. Mainly because the referendum was positive (peaceful and democratic), helps the FNP to achieve our broad goal: steadily gaining more say for Fryslân. This places the FNP’s aims in a wider European frame. This way, the unicity of the FNP doesn’t get recognition in The Netherlands, but also the wider European connections between minority regions are getting clearer.

on their followers, so voters are confused and ever election results in a lottery.”

4. As we have covered already, there are of

You’re right to ask this question. Firstly, the world needs a strong EU at the moment. The threat of Putin, the challenges on the field of energy supplies, sustainability and economics are too big to handle on a national Dutch level. But the EU won’t get stronger, more likely weaker, when the European Nation States and the political elites connected to them don’t let go. By letting go we mean getting the citizens more directly involved in Europe. The EU parliament should become a parliament that can send EU ministers home and that is freely electable (so, for example, the Dutch should be able to vote for a Spanish party). Therefore, it’s important that the EU is given back to the Europeans, one of the main ways to do so is performing it from the regions. It’s in the European regions that people are most pro-European. So having strong European regions means having a strong European Union!

course nationalist and separatist movements currently in Europe, but most of the members of our editorial board have commented that, if anything, the EU has an atmosphere of increased unity. As a leader calling for more autonomy, how do you position Friesland and the FNP in a European environment that is continually becoming more unified? Dat is in terjochte fraach. Alderearst, de wrald hat in sterke EU fanneden op dit momint. De driging fan Poetin, de útdagings op it med fan enerzjyfoarsjenning, duorsumens en ekonomy binne fierstente grut om op nasjonaal Nederlânsk nivo de baas te kinnen. Mar de EU sil net sterker en earder swakker wurde as de Europeeske Naasjesteaten en de politike elites dy’t der oan fêsthingje net mear loslitte. En mei loslitte bedoele wy in mear streekrjochte beheljen fan de boargers by Europa. It EU parlemint moat in echt parlemint wurde dat EU ministers nei hús stjoere kin en frij ferkiesber is (dus Nederlanners moatte ek op in Spaanske partij stimme kinne). It is dus derom wichtich dat de EU wer werom jûn wurdt oan de boargers en ien fan de wichtichste wizen om soks te dwaan is it fia de regio’s te dwaan. Krekt yn de Europeeske regio’s binne de minsken it meast pro Europeesk. Dus sterke Europeeske Regio’s betsjut in sterke Europeeske Uny

“The EU parliament should become a parliament that can send EU ministers home and that is freely electable

... It’s in the European

regions that people are most pro-European. So having strong

European regions means having a strong European Union.”

5. This may be a difficult question to answer, but,

as you represent Friesland, a region with a very distinctive history and culture with its own language, and a party that advocates greater autonomy for that region and the promotion of the Frisian language, do you identify first as Frisian or Dutch, or both, and to what extent? Is there an issue of identity for Frisians at stake?

It’s not such a difficult question, because this is all about a certain feeling. If you’d asked me to express it in decimals, it would be a lot harder. I don’t have any objections against the Dutch State. Mind you, The Netherlands once started as a free republic of regions like Fryslân. We have a tolerant and an open tradition and a fine welfare state. I am a Frisian but also a Dutchman. I feel no contradiction in that. Yet, exactly that is the case, is the problem we’re putting the finger on. The Netherlands don’t leave the Frisians and Fryslân enough room for their politics. I believe most Frisians feel both Frisian and Dutch, without seeing any contradiction between the two.

Dy fraach is net lestich want it giet hjir om it gefoel. As it yn desimalen útdrukt wurde moatst, wie it in stik lestiger. Ik ha gjin muoite mei of beswier tsjin de Nederlânske Steat. Ommers, Nederlân is ea begûn as in frije republyk fan gewesten, lykas Fryslân. It hat in tolerante en iepen tradysje mei in prima wolfeartssteat. Ik bin Fries mar ek Nederlanner. Dat is gjin tsjinstelling. Dat soks al it gefal is, is krekt it probleem. Nammentlik, Nederlân jout op it stuit steatkundich en polityk te min romte oan Fryslân en de Friezen. Ik tink dat de measte Friezen harren Nederlanner en Fries fiele. Hja sjogge gjin tsjinstelling tusken Nederlanner en Fries wezen.

6. As a follow up to that question, with

Primarily, we stand up for Fryslân and the Frisian interests. But there’s a wider theme that is not purely Frisian, but also touches the way that The Netherlands works right now, both political and administrive. And I mean direct influence of the citizens on control and care, housing, media and so on.

Netherlands’ history of unity as I understand it, and here I think back to ‘De Tuin van Holland,’ how do you place the campaign for Frisian autonomy within the Netherlands itself? I have heard that there are also movements in, for example, Limburg, that may potentially gain strength if your referendum for increased autonomy is successful. How important is this to you and the FNP? Is your party ‘Friesland first’, and what sort of importance does the rest of the Netherlands have for the FNP’s current goals?

But in the hearts and minds of the people, in the first place it’s about Fryslân. When a movement like this goes on in other parts of The Netherlands, we would surely applaude that.

Primêr komme wy op foar Fryslân en de Fryske belangen. Mar, der sit al in bredere tematyk achter dy’t net puer Frysk is, mar ek te krijen hat mei de wize wêrop as Nederlân op dit stuit polityk en bestjoerlik wurket. En dan giet it om streekrjochte ynfloed fan de boargers op bestjoer en soarch, folkshúsfesting, media ensafuorthinne. Mar yn de belibbing fan de minsken giet it troch yn it foarste plak om Fryslân. Mar as yn oare regio’s fan Nederlân itselde barre soe, dan soene wy der wiis mei wêze.

Simplicissimus would again like to thank Mr. Jan-Daem de Langen and Ms. Renate Kuivenhoven with their great assistance with the English translation.

Netherlands

Cody Dales

Three Dutch Poems on Death Jan Vos, Multatuli, Jacqueline van der Waals Adapted by Cody Dales

Grafschrift van P.C. Hooft Jan Vos De Doodt heeft Hooft geveldt. De steen bedekt het graf. De tijd maeckt hem tot asch: maer alles is te laf Op ‘t edele vernunft, als was ‘t voor weynigh uuren. Zijn veder zal de Doodt, de Steen, en Tijdt verduuren.

Epitaph of P.C. Hooft Death has cut Hooft down. The stone’s on his grave. Time will make him ash: but it will save That great mind, like before his last hours wained. Death, stone, and time gone, his pen will remain.

De Dood als Verlosser Jacqueline van der Waals

Death the Redeemer

Kom nu met uw donker, diep erbarmen, Eindelijke Dood. Laat dit pijnlijk lichaam in uw armen, Rusten als het kind op moeders schoot.

At last, Death. Come now with your mercy, deep and dark. In your arms let this suffering body rest, Like a kid near his mother’s heart.

Laat mij veilig door de schaduw uwer groote Vleugelen gedekt Slapen gaan, het moede oog gesloten, En het lichaam pijnloos uitgestrekt.

Let me be covered now, Safe under your wings’ great shroud. With my painless body stretched out, And my tired eyes now shut.

Grafschrift op Thorbecke Multatuli Wandlaar die me hier begraven ziet Als ‘t sterven een kunst was, dan lag ik hier niet.

Epitaph for Thorbecke Traveler, you who see me in the ground, If dying were an art, I wouldn’t be lying around.

“The Ice Queen” by Charlie Caplan

Scandinavia

Born of Cold And Winter Air: Early Ice Queens Ali Zimmerman

ecause Ice Queens, even in Andersen, are rarely emotional and seldom nurturing, they seem to reject what women are supposed to be. They also oppose what women are supposed to want, namely a permanent, monogamous, and heterosexual relationship. Perhaps, if men did not find the Ice Queen so desirable, her disdain for them would not matter. But in all accounts she is a supremely beautiful woman, and her decision to divorce appearing female from acting feminine threatens the masculine world and the order it demands.

Subject; he is the Absolute. She is the Other” (6). The early Ice Queens of Andersen and Lewis deviate from the conventions of proper womanhood in the same way that women contrast with men. Thus, the Ice Queen is doubly Other, opposed not only to man but also to woman. Specifically, these Ice Queens reject the masculine order’s demands that women become mothers and sexually passive objects otherwise known as ‘wives;’ much as it galls man, he depends on woman to submit to his sexual advances in order to create more men through her. Consequently, the Ice Queen is portrayed as an odd combination of sterility and sexual aggressiveness; she may actively pursue men sexually, but the threat of pregnancy is never associated with her. These contradictory qualities deviate from the norm of female sexuality and paradoxically make the Ice Queen more attractive and alluring to men. But because her choices are so threatening to the masculine order, the Ice Queen must face consequences ranging from hesitant ostracism in Andersen to Lewis’s certain damnation.

As a pioneer of feminist theory, Simone de Beauvoir knows all about the demands of this masculine order, and her perspective proves essential to understanding the complicated role Ice Queens play in their social framework. In her seminal work, The Second Sex, Beauvoir argues that man regards woman as fundamentally opposed and subordinated to himself: compared to him, “she is the inessential in front of the essential. He is the

and glass alike.

The structure of this essay (the first chapter of Zimmerman’s senior thesis submitted to Harvard’s Department of Folklore and Mythology), then, is fourfold. First, I will establish the Ice Queens’ double Otherness by analyzing how the names and appearances that Andersen and Lewis choose for them impact readers’ perceptions of the category of “Ice Queen.” I will then demonstrate their deviant sexuality by illustrating their rejection of motherhood and sexual passivity and their (seeming) opposition to Andersen’s and Lewis’s properly feminine characters. Third, I will illustrate the paradoxical allure of their sterility and sexual aggressiveness before finally describing Andersen’s and Lewis’s dissimilar approaches to the consequences of being an Ice Queen.

Unfortunately, no brave girl can save Rudy, the hero of Andersen’s “The Ice- Maiden.” When Rudy is still a baby, he and his mother fall into a crevasse concealed beneath the alpine snow. The Ice Maiden, who rules the glaciers and mountains, seizes his mother and vows to find the boy who escaped her grasp. Despite her murderous efforts, Rudy survives childhood by learning to be brave: as long as he does not fear, the Ice Maiden cannot touch him. As a man, he falls in love with Babette, a wealthy miller’s daughter. The couple plans to marry but the Ice Maiden has other plans, for the adult Rudy is susceptible not only to fear but also to her feminine wiles. Eventually, the Ice Maiden seduces Rudy and drowns him on the eve of his wedding.

But first, let me introduce the stories that form the canon of early Ice Queen narratives, for the heart of this thesis lies in the tales. They help establish both the historical, traditional definition of the Ice Queen – an otherworldly woman, associated with snow and ice, who is both sexual and sterile – and the complex differences between individual iterations of the figure. The first1 Ice Queen appears in Andersen’s “The Snow Queen: A Fairy Tale in Seven Stories,” which centers on the adventures of and the relationship between two children named Gerda and Kai. One day, two splinters of glass from an evil troll’s mirror strike Kai in his eye and his heart. The glass in his eye distorts Kai’s view of the world, blinding him to all that is good. The shard in his chest begins to turn his heart to ice. Together, the fragments make Kai cold and distant. In time, he rejects Gerda completely and accompanies the mysterious Snow Queen to her palace of ice and snow. The rest of the story follows Gerda’s epic journey to rescue Kai from Queen

“... the historical, traditional definition of the Ice Queen - an otherwordly woman, associated with snow and ice, who is both sexual and sterile ...” As antagonistic as Andersen’s creations appear, they pale in comparison to the villainy of Lewis’s White Witch of Narnia. She appears in two of Lewis’s seven Chronicles: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and its postdated prequel, The Magician’s Nephew. The former acquaints us with Lucy, Peter, Susan, and Edmund Pevensie, who discover a portal to the magical kingdom of Narnia within an old wardrobe. During their journey they encounter the White Witch, who has cursed Narnia with eternal winter and forcibly seized its throne. With the help of the Christ-like lion, Aslan, the Pevensie children eventually defeat the

Bo Grønbech, one of Andersen’s many biographers, asserts that Andersen wrote “The Snow Queen” “without the help of tradition by using his own imagination” (101). But while Andersen does establish the figure of the Ice Queen, he also employs many folkloric traditions and motifs within her personage. Fairy tale scholar Maria Tatar notes the Snow Queen’s similarities to Hel, the goddess of the Nordic underworld, and Mother Holle, the Germanic figure who causes it to snow when she shakes her down comforter (in Andersen, AHCA 31n23). Tatar also observes, “Like vampires, lamiae, and other supernatural monsters, the Snow Queen uses seductive charms to trap her victims and rob them of their life substance” (31n24). These figures of folklore reverberate within Andersen’s Snow Queen. However, that does not diminish Andersen’s exceptional ability to combine disparate traditions in a unique and imaginative way. 1

Witch and become the true kings and queens of Narnia. The Magician’s Nephew centers around two young friends, Digory Kirke and Polly Plummer, who unwittingly unleash the wicked Witch upon Aslan’s newly-created world of Narnia. These three tales, different though they may be, establish the distinct character of the Ice Queen, and, through their varied representations, hint at the figure’s enigmatic possibilities and fluid nature.

Establishing Otherness The Ice Queens’ names first establish their double Otherness. Andersen and Lewis chose carefully feminized titles for their characters: queens, maidens, and witches are never men. These nouns divorce the Ice Queens not only from masculinity but also from the gender ambiguity embedded in contemporary English words such as ‘doctor,’ ‘lawyer,’ and ‘professor.’ Readers anticipate femininity before ever beginning the story. But simultaneously, the Ice Queens’ titles indicate separation from the feminine norm. Man permits woman to become a wife and mother; the limited domain of proper femininity permits no other roles. Of the three titles, only the Ice Maiden’s seems to agree with man’s conception of proper femininity. The virgin plays a legitimate role in the feminine life cycle; at some point, all females have not yet had sex. A woman’s virginity, however, only gains significance2 when it is lost. That is to say, only the man who deflowers the virgin values her chastity. The maiden exists for man to possess and penetrate. Consequently, man views the woman who refuses defloration as deviant and potentially dangerous. Beauvoir explains, “Virgins that men have not subjugated, old women who have escaped their power, are

more easily looked upon as witches than other women; as woman’s destiny is to be doomed to another, if she does not submit to a man’s yoke, she is available for the devil’s” (174). If the Ice Maiden stays too long a virgin, she risks exclusion from proper femininity, and indeed this is the fate to which she succumbs. The Ice Maiden may prove a perfectly innocuous not-yet-bride, but only time separates her from the White Witch and total exclusion from the feminine sphere. Witches are wicked. They make pacts with devils, steal babies, eat children, and lock princesses away in towers. They hardly fulfill man’s expectations of motherhood and passivity, and Lewis’s decision to align his Ice Queen with the image of the “witch” clearly places her in a realm of contested femininity. The same

“Readers anticipate femininity before ever beginning the story. But simultaneously, the Ice Queen’s titles indicate seperation from the feminine norm.” might be said for Andersen’s Snow Queen. A queen upends the expectations of female passivity to govern women and men alike. But woman, the inferior Other, cannot rule over the autonomous man. To eliminate this cognitive dissonance, queens are seen as possessing no gender at all. Beauvoir says that rulers such as Isabella of Spain, Elizabeth I, and Catherine the Great “were neither male nor female: they were sovereigns” (150). The Snow Queen’s regality therefore thrusts her beyond femininity and encourages readers to perceive her as something other than woman. The Ice Queens’ wintry adjectives support

The value of virginity is culturally relative. While many societies (including those based in Christianity and Islam) have viewed a woman’s virginity as the possession of her future husband, some traditions fear the maiden woman based on “the idea that the feminine principle is so powerful and threatening because it is intact” (Beauvoir 172). Among these peoples, women are often ritually deflowered before marriage, lest their virginities cause their new husbands harm. 2

However, because both Andersen and Lewis exhibit Christian beliefs (and Christianity demands premarital chastity while also promoting masculine superiority) Beauvoir would advocate for interpreting maidenness as a masculine possession: she writes, “woman’s virginity is demanded more imperiously when man considers the wife as his personal property” (173).

the double Otherness their names imply. The Snow Queen, the Ice Maiden, and the White Witch do not merely rule over winter, they are actually constructed from it. Although they look like women, they instead stem from the inorganic and the inhuman. The Snow Queen is made of “dazzling, sparkling ice” (Andersen, AHCA 31). She is the largest of winter’s snowflakes, blossoming from the crystalline structure as tulips emerge from their bulbs. The Ice Maiden, likewise, is “half a child of air and half the powerful ruler of the streams” (IM 19). Dwelling in the space between water and wind, she is the breath of coldness that combines the two elements to create ice and snow. One might even borrow the lyrics to Frozen’s opening song and say she was “Born of cold and winter air / And mountain rain combining” (Lee 1). Lewis describes the White Witch as similarly non- human. However, she is not inorganic but rather descended from mythical monsters and lacking even “a drop of real Human blood” (Lewis, LWW 77). By adding Snow, Ice, and White to their characters’ names, Andersen and Lewis efficiently reveal the Ice Queens’ fantastic natures. They cannot be properly feminine because they are not even properly human.

woman so beautiful” (Lewis, MN 48). Rudy calls the Ice Maiden “fresh as the newly fallen snow, blooming as the alpine rose and light as a kid” (Andersen, IM 112). The Ice Queens’ superlative appearances are targeted at masculinity. Traditionally, women who attract males will benefit from greater opportunities to fulfill her feminine destiny by becoming a mother. Ice Queens are not human, and yet their physical attractiveness positions them as objects of masculine attention. The Ice Queen’s beauty initially complicates her relationship to femininity, but her other physical trait, whiteness, ultimately pulls her back into the realm of double Otherness. When the Snow Queen first appears to Kai, she wraps herself in “a dress made of white gossamer so fine and sheer that it looked like millions of sparkling snowflakes” (Andersen, AHCA 27). Later, Andersen describes her as “brilliantly white” (31). The Ice Maiden has “long snow-white hair” and the White Witch of Narnia is “not merely pale, but white like snow or paper or icing sugar” (Andersen, IM 19; Lewis, LWW 27). She sweeps into The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe bedecked in white furs and riding in a sledge drawn by two white reindeer (27). In The Magician’s Nephew, Lewis describes the Witch in more sinister terms: “her face was deadly white, white as salt” (160). The Ice Queens’ tintless appearances and alabaster accoutrements allude to the impossible source of their beauty, and thus to their compromised humanity. Few seamstresses can sew with gossamer. Maidens rarely have white hair. The browns and reds of human skin seldom dissolve to the shade of sugar and salt. Their unnatural whiteness makes the Ice Queens visually distinct from normal women. No longer merely the Other to man’s Absolute, the Ice Queen is doubly Other, opposed not only

The Ice Queens’ appearances further denote them as doubly Other. Two physical characteristics define these characters: beauty and whiteness. The Ice Queens’ beauty stuns the men and boys around them. When Kai first encounters the Snow Queen, he is humbled by her loveliness: “She was so beautiful. He couldn’t imagine a wiser, lovelier face” (Andersen, AHCA 31-2). Digory’s first brush with the White Witch similarly affects him. Her beauty is so striking that even “Years afterwards when he was an old man, Digory said he had never in all his life known a

It is important to note here the distinction between the two authors’ attitudes toward the Ice Queen’s double Otherness, although the topic will be discussed at great length later. Where Andersen’s tales are clearly ambivalent about the role of Ice Queens, treating them as both enticing and potentially destructive, Lewis takes a far less nuanced perspective in his allegorical treatment of the White Witch. These Ice Queens may share many characteristics, but that does not imply a unified understanding of the figure’s power and purpose.

to masculinity but also to the expectations and appearances of femininity.3

femininity is incomplete. Without the blush of womb blood, they cannot hope to fulfill the first of the two demands man places on woman: to become mothers. Previous authors have noted the barrenness of the Ice Queens. Monica Jacobsson writes, “The Snow Queen, with her inability to reproduce, is therefore an unnatural woman according to nineteenthcentury gender ideology” (178). And in fact, none of the Ice Queens ever give birth; one doubts whether they even can. The Snow Queen is comprised of ice while the Ice Maiden arises from water and wind. The White Witch destroys every member of her species in The Magician’s Nephew, leaving no one with whom she may reproduce. Although neither Andersen nor Lewis comment directly on their characters’ reproductive abilities, the Ice Queens’ whiteness, when combined with their inorganic and inhuman natures, symbolically leads to sterility.

Deviant Sexuality The Ice Queen embodies double Otherness, rejecting both the masculine and feminine worlds of signification through her complex presentation. This doubled Otherness encourages Andersen and Lewis to sever the bond between sexuality and fertility in the body of the Ice Queen. For most women, expression of (hetero)sexuality eventually leads to pregnancy. The Ice Queen breaks the chain. She may take advantage of the sexual opportunities open to her as a beautiful woman, but the sexual acts are never productive because of her inhuman nature. Her lack of color again proves important in this distinction, subtly revealing the Ice Queen’s ability to sever sexuality from motherhood.

After distancing themselves from the blush and blood of motherhood, the Ice Queens further their opposition to the masculine order by rejecting its second demand: sexual passivity. Instead they become the sexual initiators and aggressors in their stories. The Ice Maiden rages against the men who save baby Rudy from the mountains, saying, “They have stolen a lovely boy from me, a boy, whom I had kissed, but not kissed to death” (Andersen, IM 29). From this point forward, her pursuit is overtly sexual. At one point, the Ice Maiden even disguises herself as one of Rudy’s old sweethearts to steal a kiss and strengthen her hold over him. The Ice Maiden’s third kiss, upon his feet, cements Rudy’s fate. “I kissed you, when you were young, kissed you on your mouth!” she exults, “Now I kiss your feet, you are entirely mine!” (130). Her kisses, which span the whole of Rudy’s being and the length of his body, make the Ice Maiden sexually dominant over Rudy. Over the course of Andersen’s story, she takes what she wants without regard for feminine sexual passivity.

Francisco Vaz da Silva argues that white combines with red to chromatically represent proper sexuality in fairy tales. Red is blood; specifically what Vaz da Silva calls “womb blood” (245). A woman sheds womb blood each month as she menstruates, at her first experience with intercourse, and during childbirth. Thus, the three drops of blood in stories such as the Brothers Grimm’s “Snow White” “match the three bleedings punctuating a woman’s destiny at puberty, defloration, and birth-giving” (245). In contrast to the biology of blood, “white stands for luminosity and untainted sheen, thus for luminous heaven as much as for purity” (245). In fairy tales, whiteness is otherworldly perfection. But when it comes to chromatic representations of femininity, whiteness is only important “insofar as it is tinged with red” (245). Purity is valuable, but “the purity of whiteness is there to be tinted” (246). In the end, redness is the mark of true womanhood and proper sexuality. Vaz da Silva’s theory directly impacts our understanding of the Ice Queens. Because they are unadulterated whiteness, their chromatic

The Snow Queen, too, rejects expectations regarding female sexuality. She stands outside Kai’s window and beckons him to join her. At first, he dares not approach, but after he has been struck with the splinters from the wicked mirror, he accompanies her into the wilderness beyond the village gates. She invites him nearer: “Come crawl under my bearskin coat,” she says (Andersen, AHCA 31). She grants him access to her body on the condition that he assume a submissive position. Kai accepts her offer but remains cold and unresponsive... until the Snow Queen kisses him. Her first kiss makes Kai feel “as if he were dying, but only for a moment” (31). When the moment of intense sensation passes, “he became quite comfortable and no longer noticed the cold all around him” (31). Her second kiss stupefies Kai’s mind and erases his memory, causing him to forget his family and former life. “That’s the last kiss you’ll get,” she tells him fondly, “or else I might kiss you to death!” (31). And so the third, most powerful kiss of the Snow Queen never comes. I shall revisit these potent kisses in subsequent pages, but for now it is enough to note that Andersen’s Ice Queens, and not the men and soon-to-be men they pursue, have the power to kiss.

Delight (31-32). Lewis replaces one appetite with another, trading sexuality for hunger and preserving the scene’s sensory appeal. In the end, Lewis, like Andersen, envisions his Ice Queen as a feminine aggressor who specifically targets males. He also stresses that masculinity is highly susceptible to this power. With their sterility and sexual aggressiveness, the Ice Queens reject the abstract conventions of proper femininity. But paradoxically, their rejection of the cultural ideals of womanhood allows the Ice Queens to more clearly define what it is to be a woman in society. Attending too closely to the deviant and overly aggressive nature of the Ice Queens’ sexuality means one might miss the productive work they do in opposing their stories’ heroines, who are the tales’ physical embodiments of proper femininity. In “The Ice-Maiden,” Babette’s proper femininity is symbolized by her desire to marry Rudy; she wants what women are supposed to want. Andersen presents the Ice Maiden as Babette’s sexual rival, contending for Rudy’s attention. The Ice Maiden makes their contest clear when she takes the form of Rudy’s old love interest in order to obtain her second kiss. Although they both want to win Rudy, the intentions of Babette and the Ice Maiden conflict; where Babette would spend her life with him, the Ice Maiden kisses Rudy to death. The value of Babette’s love and proper feminine nature is highlighted by her stark contrast with the destructive Ice Maiden.

Lewis, perhaps finding the poorly-hidden sexuality of Andersen’s Ice Queens inappropriate for children, allows his White Witch to bestow no kisses. However, she still rejects expectations of feminine sexual passivity. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the Witch orders Edmund Pevensie into her sledge, so “he stepped on to the sledge and sat at her feet, and she put a fold of her fur mantle around him and tucked it well in” (Lewis, LWW 31). The scene closely parallels the interaction between Kai and the Snow Queen; Lewis repeats everything from the boys’ subordinate positions to the Ice Queens’ intimate and encompassing actions. Unwilling to expose Edmund, a little boy, to overtly sexual pleasures, Lewis exchanges the icy kisses of the Snow Queen for stimulation of another kind. The White Witch offers Edmund a hot drink that “warmed him right down to his toes” and gives him an entire box of Turkish

Lewis creates an equivalent opposition between the White Witch and Lucy, the heroine of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. While they do not directly compete over a man, their female ancestors once shared a husband. As a human girl, Lucy is considered a “Daughter of Eve” (Lewis, LWW 9). The Witch, however, is a daughter of Lilith. According to legend and to Lewis, Lilith is Adam’s first wife. Unlike Eve, who was created as an afterthought from her husband’s rib, Lilith emerges with Adam from the earth (Humm in McSporran 192). While Eve would accept her subservient position in the male order, Lilith feels herself Adam’s equal (192). She escapes from Eden rather than

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submit to his orders, thus making room in the garden for Eve (193). Perhaps Eve’s resentment towards Adam’s first companion has been passed on to her descendants, but whatever the reason for their opposition, Cathy McSporran stresses that “Daughters of Lilith will not find allies in Daughters of Eve” (203). Through the image of the White Witch, Lucy learns not to model herself on the qualities of Lilith, but instead to maintain her alliance with the properly subservient Eve.

forget about the properly feminine Gerda and make him comfortable with the cold (Andersen, AHCA 31). Gerda responds to the Ice Queen’s sexual advances with chaste kisses, re-animating Kai from the emotional hibernation that the Snow Queen caused (Tatar in Andersen, AHCA 65n74). She kisses Kai’s cheeks, to return them to rosy redness; his eyes, which then begin to “shine like hers;” and his hands and feet, making him feel “strong and healthy once again” (65). Her actions are symbolic rather than sexual. Through Gerda’s childlike purity, which Andersen relates to “the redemptive power of the Christ child,” she saves Kai from the Snow Queen’s sexual attractions and corrupting influences (59n64). Gerda’s ties to the Virgin Mary and to Christ no longer emphasize maternity alone, but also demonstrate her immaculateness in a stark contrast to the Snow Queen’s improperly aggressive sexuality.

Perhaps the clearest opposition between an Ice Queen and her story’s heroine occurs in “The Snow Queen.” Monica Jacobsson writes, “The Snow Queen is in every respect Gerda’s opposite” (178). Where the Snow Queen embodies whiteness, Gerda possesses strong ties to shades of red. Andersen introduces her via the roses that span the distance between her house and Kai’s. The roses represent menstrual blood and demonstrate Gerda’s

“Gerda’s ties to the Virgin Mary and to Christ no longer emphasize maternity alone, but also demonstrate her immaculateness in a stark contrast to the Snow Queen’s improperly aggressive sexuality.” future inclusion in the community of sexual reproducers. Although her youth implies she has not yet experienced menarche, the story makes Gerda’s procreative potential explicit: the path of roses leads directly to the boy she loves, the boy who might one day become her lover. The blooms link Gerda to the classical goddesses of love, Venus and Aphrodite, and also to the Virgin Mary (Andersen, AHCA 24n9). Thus, while the Snow Queen exists, according to Vaz da Silva, in a world of incomplete chromatic femininity, Gerda illustrates properly shaded womanhood. Blood and roses link her not only to love and beauty but also to the mother of Christ: the quintessential image of maternity.

But while the Snow Queen and Gerda symbolically oppose each other, unlike the women of “The Ice-Maiden” and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, they have no history of sexual rivalry. The two never battle over Kai. They never even meet. From the tale’s beginning to its end, Kai belongs to Gerda, and the Snow Queen never questions or challenges this reality. On the contrary, rather than attempting to annul their relationship, she strengthens it. This is a crucial point, because it implies for the first time that the Ice Queen might coexist with a proper woman and that proper woman might benefit from a relationship with an Ice Queen; the Ice Queen’s opposition to proper femininity may in fact be necessary to the survival of that concept. Rather than just highlighting proper femininity, the Snow Queen creates the conditions for that femininity to succeed. This potential symbiosis twists their relationship from antagonism and opposition to harmony, even

Predictably, the Snow Queen’s sexual agency directly opposes Gerda’s childlike purity. In contrast to the Snow Queen’s seduction, Gerda’s love is innocent. The former’s icily sensual kisses transform Kai from innocence to sexual experience. They cause him to

sisterhood. This socially productive reading of the Snow Queen’s relationship to Gerda has not received critical consideration, and yet it ultimately explains why the Ice Queen remains a stable cultural figure despite her apparently threatening actions.

Kai attempting to spell the word eternity with shards of ice. The Snow Queen has promised Kai, “If you can puzzle that out, you’ll be your own master, and I will give you the whole world and a pair of new skates” (Andersen, AHCA 64). Notably, the Snow Queen does not offer to free Kai, for his freedom is not hers to give. Instead, the shards from the wicked troll’s mirror imprison him. Kai can leave the Snow Queen’s palace at any time, but until he finds his forever in the girl who loves him, he can never escape from his internal bondage – from the glass that freezes his mind, hardens his heart, and suspends him in a realm of bitter isolation. Thus, the seeming opposition between the Snow Queen and Gerda dissolves into harmony.

Let me explain what I mean: Although the Snow Queen supposedly opposes Gerda, she cannot rightly be called the book’s antagonist. That job belongs to the invisible splinters that cause Kai to reject Gerda’s world and follow the Snow Queen in the first place. Wolfgang Lederer argues that when Kai is struck with the splinters, he merely experiences “the onset of a perfectly normal, if disagreeable, adolescent phase” (28). When Kai repudiates Gerda, Lederer contends that he is merely fulfilling his natural masculine duties of “differentiation from girls and women” and “finding a positive male identity” (27). However, Andersen emphasizes the mirror’s detrimental and isolatory effects. The glass fractures Kai and Gerda’s seemingly indissoluble bond. Kai must emerge from adolescence to reunite with Gerda. But he demonstrates no movement toward maturity, and if the mirror finishes transforming his heart from human organ to solid ice, Gerda might lose him forever.

Just as white and red combine to create a chromatically choate woman, the Snow Queen and Gerda work together to rescue Kai from the devilish mirror’s splinters. Gerda ultimately saves her hero. However, in illuminating the path out of adolescence, the Snow Queen makes Kai salvageable. After he receives the Snow Queen’s kisses, Kai wonders for the first time if “he didn’t really know enough” (Andersen, AHCA 32). Until now, he has been utterly sure of himself. He never questions his imperfect vision or challenges the wickedness that the mirror instills in his heart. Lederer believes “we can assume that he now is hungry for more facts, for more knowledge of the scientific kind,” but he assumes too hastily (27). Perhaps Kai instead hungers for a more human knowledge, for information and experience that will allow him to shed his adolescent imperfections and return to the eternity of Gerda’s love.

Fortunately, this does not occur. The Snow Queen appears and invites Kai into her beautiful and dangerous world. Although this may seem to exacerbate the separation between Gerda and the boy she loves, it actually has the opposite effect. By taking Kai away, the Snow Queen encourages Gerda to bring him back. Her superficially villainous actions allow Gerda to cast aside the sting of Kai’s rejection, to overcome her helplessness and become, in Maria Tatar’s words, “a courageous heroine who maintains her wits” (Andersen, AHCA 17). The Snow Queen acts purposively when she attempts to save Kai from destructive adolescence and reunite him with his love. Gerda does not know how to save Kai from the ice shards within his body but in the Snow Queen, she finds an ‘enemy’ who is easily overcome. When Gerda finally reaches the Snow Queen’s icy palace, she finds

Andersen unites Gerda and the Snow Queen around a common goal as they attempt to rescue Kai from the destructive glass that imprisons him. As a result, they become sisters of a sort, demonstrating the harmony between red and white. Even their signature symbols – the rose and the snowflake – conceal affinity beneath ostensible antagonism. The crystalline precision of ice quickly overwhelms the delicate summer petals at the first frost. Yet

the whiteness of winter also covers autumn’s bare earth, keeping it warmer than the outside air. Come spring, the thick comforter melts, saturating the ground and preparing it for another year of prosperity. The being of winter thus fosters and protects the fragile fertility of spring. By encouraging Kai to become a man and enabling Gerda’s rose to bloom, the Snow Queen becomes a figure of seasonality and sisterhood, rather than certain opposition. Consequently, the Snow Queen extends the role of the Ice Queen; instead of merely highlighting proper femininity, she becomes essential to its success.

Witch eventually faces the consequences for her actions. Nevertheless, she still embodies the promise of perfection and the chance at immortality, as do all of the early Ice Queens. But the appeal of the Ice Queen is not simply abstract and intellectual; her sexual aggressiveness also entices man. While the proper wife’s sexual passivity fulfills man’s desires “to conquer, take, and possess,” he simultaneously finds her lack of sexual response displeasing (Beauvoir 171). Proper women must only receive male penetration but the Ice Queens actively pleasure their partners, offering them a path to sublimity. When the White Witch invites Edmund under her robes, she gives him a box of Turkish Delight that is so delicious “that anyone who had once tasted it would want more and more of it” (Lewis, LWW 33). Edmund’s bliss may be more sensual than sexual, but the White Witch certainly gives him pleasure. Rudy experiences a more adult sensation when he drinks the Ice Maiden’s wine. Andersen writes, “His eyes beamed, a life, a glow came over him; all sorrow and oppression seemed to die away; gushing, fresh human nature stirred itself within him” (IM 111). Regardless of whether the stirring within Rudy is figurative or the beginning of an erection, the scene contains strong sexual undertones; Rudy responds to the elimination of his sorrow by demanding a kiss and the Ice Maiden readily obliges him.

Hidden Allure Examining the abstract ways in which Ice Queens relate to women only reveals half of the story. Within the texts, Ice Queens interact mainly with men. Theoretically, because of their improper femininity, men should reject the Ice Queens; a properly conditioned man should see how antithetical she is to the stability of the society he creates. However, the Ice Queens’ seemingly deleterious sterility and sexual aggression actually mask hidden allure. Beauvoir notes that man feels ambivalent about the very qualities he demands from woman. While he marvels at the “magic fertility” of the mother (164), he also blames the mother for his eventual demise because he associates the moment of birth with the moment he begins to die (166). Man, Beauvoir continues, “considers himself a fallen god; his curse is to have fallen from a luminous and orderly heaven into the chaotic obscurity of the mother’s womb” (164). The Ice Queens, conveniently enough, demonstrate precisely this heavenly luminosity with their whiteness. Far from chaos, the Snow Queen is “mathematical perfection” (Tatar in Andersen, AHCA 31n25). The Ice Maiden’s kisses cause Rudy’s death, literally allowing him to enter heaven and obtain Christian immortality. Even the villainous White Witch symbolizes escape from the unending cycle of birth and death: in The Magician’s Nephew, she eats an apple that grants her “unwearying strength and endless days like a goddess” (Lewis, MN 174). Of course, the White

The Snow Queen’s potent kisses also promise pleasure. If she kisses Kai thrice she would kiss him “to death” (Andersen, AHCA 31). The word ‘die’ was first used as a euphemism for sexual orgasm in 1600, with Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, with poets such as Donne and Dryden continuing the usage throughout the seventeenth century (“die, v.1”). As such, it is a familiar signifier for sexual pleasure. In addition, the temporary impression of death and the blissful blankness that Kai experiences at the hands of the Snow Queen strongly resemble the conception of la petite mort: the orgasmic loss of awareness and sense of mortality (“petite mort, n.”). Given the explicit sexuality of Andersen’s scene, the kiss’s

male. Divine masculine authority is restored; terrifying female rebellion has been crushed, at least for today” (196).

alternative meaning deserves consideration. Ultimately, intercourse leads more naturally to orgasm than to death. Although the time is not right to bring Kai to climax – he is not yet a man, after all – the Snow Queen’s ability to satisfy her sexual partner demonstrates the contradictory allure of a woman who rejects the masculine order’s demands for female passivity. All of these Ice Queens, therefore, provide men access to a realm of sensual pleasure unavailable in traditional femininity. Consequently, they are both desired by men for the novel experiences they provide, and implicitly condemned for challenging men’s commitment to his self-created idea of womanhood.

Andersen chooses to contain his characters rather than to crush them. The Snow Queen and the Ice Maiden do not wield the same terrifying and all-encompassing power that the White Witch enjoys in Narnia. Instead, they rule in carefully bounded realms. The Snow Queen cannot enter the protected sphere of domesticity. Maria Tatar writes, “The Snow Queen can thrive only out-of-doors, and for that reason, warm interior spaces provide a safe zone for humans” (in Andersen, AHCA 27n13). Moreover, the Snow Queen does not pursue Kai after he has successfully navigated the realm of icy adolescence and achieved adulthood. When Gerda redeems him, he is safe for good. The Ice Maiden’s domain is similarly limited. The ruler of the glaciers and mountains cannot trespass upon “the green spots where the mint thrives” (Andersen, IM 20). Moreover, she can only touch what her kisses have already claimed. She cannot reach young, fearless Rudy until he grows to adulthood and can be persuaded to give her his lips. For Andersen, the consequence of improper femininity is ostracization from the community. The Ice Maiden must stay on her mountain. Certainly, she cannot be defeated. She is a force of nature, a blizzard or a mountain avalanche. Although she ultimately causes Rudy’s death, she is no more evil than the lynx that hunts a snowshoe hare. Both creatures merely act according to their natures. The Ice Maiden plays an important role in the life cycle: Lederer says, “The Ice Maiden, of course, is Death” (29). Although we may not like this role, the Ice Maiden’s presence is both natural and positive. As Rudy dies, the Ice Maiden celebrates, for she has finally obtained him. “You are mine!” she cries from the deep waters of the alpine lake (Andersen, IM 131). Meanwhile, a second voice repeats her words from a loftier vantage point, delighting in Rudy’s arrival in Paradise. Andersen writes, “How happy to fly from love to love, from earth to heaven!” (131). For him, a noble and pious Christian death is the happiest

Contradictory Consequences “The Snow Queen,” “The Ice-Maiden,” and The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe arrive at very different conclusions regarding the consequences of being an Ice Queen. Lewis, much more so than Andersen, condemns the Ice Queen for her improper femininity. The daughter of Lilith is a villainous tyrant who must be destroyed. After seizing the Narnian throne, the White Witch curses the land with eternal snow, making it “Always winter and never Christmas” (Lewis, LWW 16). In doing so, she removes winter from its seasonal cycle and creates an unnatural space where living processes are interrupted. She creates a world of danger and hardship: winter is an inhospitable season. The daily struggle to subsist becomes more difficult with the addition of coldness, ice, and snow. At the same time, she eliminates the silver linings, denying Narnians of the festivities, good will, and hopefulness that is Christmas. As Elsa learns in Frozen, powers over ice and snow can lead to either beauty or danger. In The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, the White Witch erases the beauty. She is dangerous and must be destroyed. At the end of the book, the great lion Aslan does precisely this, flinging himself on top of the Witch and pinning her underneath his weight (Lewis, LWW 174). This leads McSporran to conclude that “at the moment of her death, Lilith is returned to her ‘place’: underneath a

transform frigidity into warmth. She may have seduced Kai with the power of her kisses, but by taking him away, she encouraged Gerda to bring him back, to redeem him for the ordinary, imperfect world in which humans live.

ending of all. Where the Ice Maiden cannot be defeated, the Snow Queen should not be defeated. She is the vehicle through which proper socialization occurs and to eliminate her presence would be to doom us to eternal adolescence. She is a contradictory figure, for although she is a spirit of the frigid and unforgiving winter, she is also the leader of the “white bees” and when she peers into houses, “the glass mysteriously freezes over, as if covered with flowers” (Andersen, AHCA 25). Her ties to the fertile pollination of bees and the organic, transient beauty of flowers make her a figure of seasonality. Unlike the White Witch and her eternal winter, the Snow Queen rules over winter in its proper time. Because she rules over the ice and snow, she alone has the power to

Andersen exiles his Ice Queens from society but allows them to continue to fulfill their socially valuable roles. But Lewis crushes the White Witch under the overwhelming force of masculinity as punishment for her double Otherness, sterility, sexual aggressiveness, and opposition to properly feminine characters. Despite their different views on the consequences for improper femininity, both authors agree that the Ice Queens must not be allowed to intrude into human civilizations. Such women are simply too dangerous to keep around. For a complete list of sources used in Ms. Zimmerman’s thesis, please refer to the Simplicissimus website, to be posted after publication.

“Tannhäuser” by Barra Peak

“Adventures of the Brothers Grimm” Laila Virgo-Carter

Scandinavia | Icelandic

Karl Aspelund

The Brothers Grimm of Iceland Jón Árnason and Magnús Grímsson Karl Aspelund Þjóðsögur Íslendinga hafa ekki hlotið sömu virðingu og sögur þjóðarinnar til dæmis úr miðöldum. En menningin er mikilvæg, söguleg, og veruleg. Í rauninni þekkjum við jafn vel þjóðsögur Íslands og sögur Þýskalands. Svipað og þar voru tveir menn ákveðnir í söfnun sagna þeirra landsmanna. Á nítjándu öld ferðuðust þeir í kring um land allt. Þeir voru Grimmsbræður Íslands, Jón Árnason og Magnús Grímsson.

The folk tales of Icelanders have not received the same kind of global attention or renown as the nation’s stories from, for instance, the middle ages. But the aspect of the culture is important, historic, and meaningful. We do, in essence, understand the folk tales of Iceland as well as those from Germany, in many respects. Just as in that country, two men were determined to collect the stories of their compatriots. In the nineteenth century they collected stories from around the country. They were the Brothers Grimm of Iceland, Jón Árnason and Magnús Grímsson.

Jón og Magnus þekktu aldeilis Grimmsbræðurna. Þeir höfðu lesið bókina þeirra Kinder- und Hausmärchen og sáu strax, eins og sannir Íslendingar, að það sama þyrfti á landinu. Einnig þekktu þeir þroska samfélaga þjóðsaga víða í Evrópu. Andagift þeirra var þó ekki nóg. Vinirnir tveir í Reykjavík voru ekki auðugir. Jón byrjaði sem bókavörður á Stimtsbókasafninu, fyrsta bóksafn landsins, árið 1848 eftir að hann lauk stúdentsprófi frá Bessastaðaskóla. Tekjurnar af bókvarðarstörfum voru ekki háar og hann var jafnframt biskupsritari og kenndi við Lærða skólann, í dag Menntaskólann í Reykjavík. Magnús var skólameistra og seinna prestur. Þó voru þeir vel tengdir. Þeir skrifuðu

Árnason and Grímsson knew most surely of the Grimm brothers. They had both read their book Kinder- und Hausmärchen and saw immediately, just as Icelanders are prone to do, that they could copy their idea in Iceland. They also were well aware of the development of societies devoted to the collection of folk tales across Europe. This inspiration was, however, not enough. The two friends in Reykjavík were not wealthy. Árnason started his career as a librarian at the Stimtisbókasafn, Iceland’s first library, in 1848 after he completed his education

“The Midgard Serpent” by Natalia Moreno at the Latin School at Bessastaðir. His income as a librarian was unsurprisingly not very high, such that he was also a secretary to the bishop and taught at the Learned School, today the Reykjavík Junior College. Grímsson, meanwhile, was a schoolmaster and later a clergyman. Despite their frugal lives, they were rich in relations across the country. They wrote to old students who had become teachers and priests across Iceland. It is not known exactly when they began working together, but letters were found from 1845, three years before Árnason even began his position as a librarian, by Grímsson with stories from students in his school. The pair then gave out Íslenzk ævintýri (ævintýri is an Icelandicization of the Latin word adventura) in 1852, but the book received little to no attention. There was little hope of further printings, and Árnason and Grímsson did not undergo any further collections. That is to say, until the German folklorist Konrad von Maurer came to visit Iceland. Maurer traveled

gömlum nemum sem höfðu orðið kennarar og prestar út um allt land. Það er ekki víst hvenær samvinnan byrjaði, en fundist hafa bréf frá árinu 1845 af hendi Magnúsar með sögur frá nemum í skólanum hans.

“Árnason and Grímsson knew most surely of the Grimm brothers. They had both read their book Kinder- und Hausmärchen and saw immediately, just as Icelanders are prone to do, that they could copy their idea in Iceland.” Þeir gáfu svo út Íslenzk ævintýr árið 1852 en hún hlaut dræmar viðtökur. Það var lítil von á fleiri prentunum, og þeir tóku ekki upp fleiri safnanir, þ.e.a.s. þangað til þýski

þjóðfræðingurinn Konrad von Maurer kom til landsins. Hann ferðaðist um Ísland árið 1858 sem hluti rannsóknar sinnar og hvatti þá að halda áfram að safna. Tveimur árum síðar dó Magnús, en Jón hélt söfnuninni áfram. Með aðstoð Maurers í þýsku borginni Leipzig var stórvirki hans Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri prentað í tveimur bindum á árunum 1862 og 1864. Bindin fela í sér 1300 blaðsíður og er stærsta og áhrifamesta safn íslenskra þjóðsagna enn í dag. Sögurnar höfðu mikla áhrif á þjóðarímynd Íslendinga einmitt þegar þjóðernisvakning þeirra var á hámarki og einnig á sjálstæðisviðleitni þjóðarinnar næstu hundrað árin. Jón varð seinna meir framstæður í menningarlíf borgarinnir og landsins. Hann rak Forngripasafn Íslands sem varð Þjóðminjasafnið og var fyrsti Landsbókavörður er Stiftisbókasafnið varð Þjóðabókhlaðan árið 1881.

across the island in 1858 as part of his research on a book on Icelandic history and literature and, after hearing of their efforts in the early part of the decade, urged the men to continue their collections. Two years later, Grímsson suddenly died, but Árnason kept on collecting. With Maurer’s help from Leipzig in Germany, Árnason’s master work, Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri was printed in two volumes in 1862 and 1864. The volumes contain together about 1300 pages and remains one of the largest and most influential collections of Icelandic tales. The stories had a powerful impact on Icelanders’ national image exactly when nationalist sentiment was reaching its climax and also helped justify for many the efforts toward political and cultural independence from Denmark over the next hundred years. Árnason would, from his efforts, become a prominent figure in Icelandic cultural life. He would direct the museum of antiquities which would become the National History Museum and the first National Librarian when the Stiftisbókasafn become the National Library in 1881.

Sumir hafa efasemdir af sannfæruleiki sagnasöfnunarinnar Jóns og Magnúsar og það er alveg rétt að þeir sem sendu þeim sögurnar gátu alveg hafið breytt svolítið til. En breytingarnar hefðu verið litlar og ómerkilegar, og munur milli smekk lærða stéttsins og aðra var lítill í þessu litla, fátæka samfélagi, þegar borið er saman við aðrar Evrópuþjóðir á 19. öld. Jón Árnason ásamt Magnúsi Grímssyni voru miklir menn. Kannski ætti maður að vera hissa, að þeir hlauta ekki sama virðingu á Íslandi og Grimmsbræðurnir í heimalandi þeirra. Þó gæti það bara verið eitthvað íslenskt.

Some have doubted the accuracy of Árnason and Grímsson’s collections, and it is true that those who sent them stories in letters could have changed whatever they had wanted. But the changes would have been small and not interesting, research shows, and the difference between the tastes of the educated class in Reykjavík—of which Árnason and Grímsson were certainly members—and other Icelanders were small in this tiny, rather poor society when compared to other nations in Western Europe in the nineteenth century. Jón Árnason and Magnús Grímsson were important men. Perhaps one ought to be surprised, that their names do not have the same awe in Iceland as that of the Brothers Grimm in their homeland. That could just be something Icelandic.

“The Tin Soldier” by Natalia Moreno 65