Reinventing Poland as German Colonial Territory in the Nineteenth Century: Gustav Freytag’s Soll und Haben as Colonial Novel

Abstract

The protagonist speaking these lines stands before a freshly plowed field with his arms outstretched as if to encompass the entire expanse of the surrounding landscape under the dominion of his heroic declaration. With this performance of the “colonial conqueror,” the protagonist is positioned within a tradition familiar to readers from the popular narratives of Spanish Conquistadors in South America, of the great surveying expeditions of the North American frontier, or of Victorian cartographers charting the interior of the African “dark continent.” Labeled by Mary Louise Pratt as “The Monarch of All I Survey,” this person identifies his power to see and visually organize a landscape with a legitimate, divine right to ownership and control.²

I stand here now as one of the conquerors who, in the name of free labor and human culture, have taken control of this land from a weaker race. We and the Slavs: it is an old struggle; and with pride, we find that cultural development (Bildung), industriousness, and financial credit are on our side.¹