Of gifts, gallantries, and horace: Luise Kulmus (Gottsched) in her early letters.

From the beginning of her relationship with Johann Christoph Gottsched, Luise Kulmus (later Luise Gottsched) gave her suitor the benefit of her views on morality and literature. In this article I delineate the difference between their views by interpreting performative acts of giving as represented in her early letters (1730-1735). J.C. Gottsched emerges in this characterization as a transitional figure with strong cultural and literary ties to the gallant culture of the late seventeenth century, while Luise Kulmus emerges as more thoroughly embodying new values of an enlightened middle class and--especially in her nuptial translations of Horace--even anticipating those of the Empfindsamkeit. (KRG)

As a performative act, giving is a bearer of cultural meaning. The execution of such acts is authorized by law and by custom, but there is usually room for individual performance. The federal government, for instance, restricts intergenerational giving (estate taxes) and encourages charitable giving (tax exemptions), thereby indicating its minimal concerns for an equitable sharing of wealth. It also stipulates what constitutes charity. By custom our culture celebrates with gifts the anniversaries of certain events and not others (Christmas, but not Independence Day). These laws and customs are not universal. They are not even uniform throughout an entire culture or stable over time. In the United States silver and golden wedding anniversaries are not universally celebrated with gifts of silver and gold. The custom that the family of the bride "gives" the wedding is no longer universally practiced, although emotions about the practice may still be strong. Within any culture there is room for historical change and individual application of customs. This means there is also room for cultural interpretation of the practices of gift giving.

There may be no aspect of European culture for which gift giving is more regulated by custom (and even law) than courtship and marriage. These cultural events have sometimes been described as business transactions, sometimes as slavery and prostitution. Much of the symbolism surrounding them, however, pertains to the giving of gifts. Traditionally the bride's family gives the groom a gift when he takes their daughter. The father of the bride gives the bride away. One speaks of giving one's hand in marriage (or of asking for it), or of giving one's heart. These concepts are part of German as well as Anglo-Saxon custom. When gifts may be accepted and when they should be offered are also matters of concern. Similarly the nature of actual gifts: their seemliness, whether they indicate a miserly or extravagant suitor, whether they adequately express a sentiment or status. What gifts "say" about the giver, the recipient, or the relationship is open to cultural interpretation.

The practice of giving is a major theme in the letters Luise Kulmus wrote to Johann Christoph Gottsched during their courtship (1730-1735), and it is this I propose to investigate here. (1) Luise Gottsched became the most important German woman author of the early modern period, yet traditional scholarship has largely failed to characterize her as an independent personality. Only recently have scholars become more interested in this task, and to date most assertions to this effect have been made in articles with a different focus. (2) It is my intention to address this issue directly. The task itself is made difficult by public claims of both Gottscheds that their views on literature aspired to universality and that she "helped" him. In fact, the letters I will discuss--her courtship letters--have provided one source for the view of Luise Gottsched as subservient to her husband.

New readings of these letters were difficult until their recent 1999 republication, although there were signs that scholars had begun to recognize Luise Gottsched's "rebelliousness" (Aufmupfigkeit, Pailer 51). Simultaneously, however, the problematic nature of the source material came to light. In 1998 Gaby Pailer began the discussion of the constructed nature of the texts that have traditionally constituted "primary" source material for the biography of Luise Gottsched: her husband's biography of her and Dorothea Henriette von Runckel's edition of her letters. Even more grave was the revelation in 1998 by Magdalene Heuser of the degree to which these letters had been edited in their "original" publication of 1771-1772 ("Neuedition"). Although none of the courtship letters has survived in manuscript form, the few letters from a later period that can be compared with manuscript versions indicate radical incursions into the language of the published letters, by whom is unclear. (3) Overall, however, the published letters do reflect the general tendency of the few extant manuscript versions. This situation makes it very difficult, if not impossible to interpret the letters at their linguistic level.

Susanne Kord was the first to address this difficulty directly. She attempted to resolve it by interpreting the letters of the 1771-1772 edition as texts jointly written by Luise Gottsched and their editor, Runckel (Little Detours). In actuality Kord denies Kulmus authorship of the letters under discussion because she (Kord) cannot believe she meant them: "[T]he trite imagery she [Kulmus] employs [is] too evocative of the worst contemporary cliches to be taken entirely seriously" (51). In this capricious interpretation Kulmus's desire to mourn the deaths of her father and her mother, to recuperate from a near fatal illness, and to recover from the bombing of Danzig are all discounted as mere "rhetoric of the Enlightenment" and efforts to "sabotage the wedding as long as humanly possible" (48). In the end, this attempt to distance Kulmus from the philosophy of the early Enlightenment (and from her religious beliefs) actually does her a great disservice. It not only wrongly portrays her as disingenuous and desperate, it miscalculates her cultural significance.

A comparison of these early letters with poems Kulmus wrote during the same period would amply illustrate her ties to the religious and philosophical views of the early Enlightenment. The following interpretation, however, revisits the courtship letters in an effort to read her relationship to her suitor through the performative acts of giving as they are represented there. It is not based primarily on the language of Luise Kulmus's letters (although obviously that cannot be ignored), but rather on the gestures and actions described. This means that I accept the language as representing a gesture or performative act in the broadest way, but do not generally interpret the language itself.