Finding focus…

Deutsches Literaturarchiv Marbach, Marbach-am-Neckar, July 4th 2023

After a transnational archive trip with my friend and colleague, I.H., where I fell out of a window trying to climb into our hotel with fried chicken, I have returned to Oxford with more material than I can possibly understand. And not only because of my bad German.

Of what we found in the archives, I won’t say too much here. With any luck, I.H.’s transcriptions will be in print by the time we both start our respective doctoral programs. All I can say is that I’m incredibly grateful to have had a friend who not only speaks German but was willing to spend so many hours in the archive transcribing the banal exchanges between petty Nazi sympathizers. It was thanks to her generosity that we managed to find at least a few items of interest.

Now, what to write?

One of the strengths of this project, I believe, is the focus on primary sources. This has grounded the work in original discoveries that bring new knowledge to historical scholarship. But it also has been somewhat of a crutch that I have clung to for several months now. In some ways, I have become overly fixated on the provenance of postcards because it is easier than facing the complex political and intellectual dynamics of this story. I am not a philosopher, nor am I really a proper historian, but I do have my sexy letters!

But now I must face the real task which is coming around naturally as I consolidate my sources into a full bibliography. I’m reminded of a story that I saw on TikTok where a student was adding comments in the margins of their own dissertation and habitually abbreviated common notes. Unfortunately, this student had abbreviated ‘analysis’ as ‘anal.’ throughout the document which was sent to their supervisor. The supervisor sent a short reply, ‘Very good draft overall. But can I ask, what is “anal” and why do you say your dissertation needs it so badly?’

I resisted any initialy analysis up until this point simply because I feel as if I don’t have enough evidence. And the evidence that I do have is in a language I can’t speak or handwriting I can’t read. But now I have had enough practice reading Blochmann’s writing and the help of several German natives to comprehend the language. All that remains is the real challenge of synthesizing this story around a coherent and logicial argument that makes a worthy contribution to a specific field of historical research. This is proving harder than anticipated.

Again, as I experienced when writing my DPhil proposal, this really is an ‘intersectional’ story with elements of Jewish studies, gender history, German literary studies, intellectual biography, international relations, political, social, as well as local history. The task at hand is deciding what I want to say about this perennially complex yet modest woman. Frankly, I feel that this would be a lot easier if there were not such a disciplinary snobbishness about writing biographies. Especially in this case.

Practically speaking, when I sit down to write an article in English about Elisabeth Blochmann, I must be consious of the reality that she will be entirely unknown to readers. And so, I must give somekind of biographical context to set-up my analysis. This is a practical necessity which most scholars resolve by citing secondary literature that provides further biographical details. But, if I am to assume that my audience does not speak German, there is not a single publication that can do the heavy lifiting for me while I continue with theorizing. Furthermore, I do believe that Blochmann had an objectively fascintating life and I don’t believe it can simply be relegated to ‘context.’

I realize that there is an extensive historiographical debate on the role of biography for intellectual history. But I haven’t even managed to get to that point yet because I’m still trying to summarize Blochmann’s early career in a paragraph while trying to decide when to introduce her relationship with Heidegger. Truthfully, I’m eager to tackle the historiographical debate but can I just tell you about this cool woman first?

At the moment, I find myself intimidated by the sheer scale of my field and seek refuge in mere storytelling. In this way, I do feel that there is something personal in the debate about microhistory. I remember being a frazzled second-year undergraduate reading Jill Lepore’s article ‘Historians Who Love Too Much’ in my historiography tutorial. Even then, I found it curious that, in light of the reams of absurdly specialist nonsense historical research, it was now appropriate to take pot shots at the chronicling of human lives. Is it not the most natural human instinct to tell stories about one another?

Lepore, of course, presents a real challenge to my work on Elisabeth Blochmann being a piece of scholarly research. Whether I am biographer or microhistorian, I cannot deny something of an emotional attachment to the subject of this story. This attachment is only increased by my being one of three people in the world who know about about this woman. I do not dismiss the professional risks in an attachment than can impact my objectivity. Lepore describes this as ‘betraying’ one’s research subject and I have tried to be careful about how much of myself I let influence the direction of this work.

That said, I also have found great comfort and affirmation in feminist scholarship (particularly the work of Jane Martin and Patricia Owens) who attempt to redeem 'auto/biographical’ research. If I accept their argument that ‘the narration of a life or self can never be confined to a single, isolated subjecthood’ then I have room to address my own personal subjectivites with regards to this project. Furthermore, though I hope for this project to develop into doctoral research, this is currently a personal venture entirely at my own expense. This research is, in many ways, my hope for the future and an accidental vocation that I am supporting throuh a day-job at the university. It doesn’t get more personal than that.

So, what will I do in the following weeks?

I will certainly be writing but I hope to write honestly. There is no deception in this story but there is a reality which I am often tempted to ignore for the sake of my own narrative. I always preferred starting chapters with a story rather than theory. There can be truth in both of these concepts but my I have long since decided that if I can’t be intelligent, I may as well be interesting.