Das „Imperium“ der Lebensreform Krachts Rezeption utopischer Projekte

Year 2015, Volume: 2 Issue: 34, 59 - 71, 01.10.2015

Marcel Schmid

Abstract

Das „Imperium“ der Lebensreform

Krachts Rezeption utopischer Projekte

Keywords

Imperium, Lebensreform

The “Imperium” of Lifereform – Kracht’s reception of utopian projects

Abstract

Christian
Kracht’s influential novel Imperium,
located between story and history, follows the life of August Engelhardt, a
German life-reforming nudist and cocovore at the fin de siècle, who in 1902
established a cocovore colony in German New Guinea, a part of the German Empire
before World War I. This article will trace the interaction of the fictional
world in Kracht’s novels (especially in Imperium,
but also in 1979, Ich werde hier sein im Sonnenschein und im
Schatten, Faserland), and the historic
life reform utopias. In a first part the comparison of story and history is at
stake. It will show how the politics of the German Empire, and that of the life
reform utopian, are converted into Kracht’s fictional world. The second part
will elaborate the circularity in Kracht’s novels, and discuss the question of
how the circularity of Kracht’s fiction radicalizes the utopia towards a
dystopia. The third section will focus on the question of the realization of
utopia, and whether a realization of utopia will erase the advancing character
of the utopian thinking. It will show that a realization of utopia is only
possible in a fictional world.   

Keywords

Christian Kracht, Lifereform, Utopia, Circularity, Self-Anthropophagy

References

• Macchia, Giovanni (1978): Il principe di Palagonia. Mostri, sogni, prodigi nelle metamorfosi di un personaggio, Mondadori, Milano.