Geopolitik als Literatur – ein germanistischer Beitrag zur Genealogie der deutschen Politischen Geographie und Geopolitik

摘要

This contribution of a literary scholar to the history of geopolitics arguesfor the consideration of literary sources as constituents of theclassical geopolitical discourse (Ratzel, Kjellén,Haushofer). It exemplifies this claim by revealing the geopoliticalcomponents through which Gustav Freytag's novel Soll und Haben(Debit and Credit, Freytag, 1855, 1858) createsspaces, civilizations, and stories. Approaching these issues from theperspective of literary history and the history of knowledge, this paperturns to Freytag's novel to examine whether the literature of the period ofthe so-called bourgeois or poetic realism belongsto the genealogy of German political geography and geopolitics and how tostudy its impact on their increasingly manifest political program after thebeginning of the First World War. Especially the establishment of the toposof the Volk ohne Raum (people without space) in the east of theGerman Reich and the reorientation of geopolitics gen Osten(toward the east) in the early twentieth century find a highly compatibleantecedent in Soll und Haben.