Schriftenreihe der Forschungsgruppe "Große technische Systeme"
des Forschungsschwerpunkts Technik - Arbeit - Umwelt am Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin tur Sozialforschung
FS II 92-502
Walther Rathenau’s Media Technological Turn as Mediated Through
W. Hartenau’s ’’Die Resurrection Co.”
An Essay at Resurrection by
Louis Kaplan
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH (WZB) Reichpietschufer 50, D-1000 Berlin 30
Tel. (030)-25 491-0 Fax (030)-25 491-684
WALTHER RATHENAU’S MEDIA TECHNOLOGICAL RETURN AS MEDIATED THROUGH W. HARTENAU’S "DIE RESURRECTION CO?’. AN ESSAY AT RESURRECTION
Abstract
In 1898, the young Walther Rathenau published the short story, "Die Resurrection Co,"
under the pseudonym o f W. Hartenau. At the border between science and fiction, this text considers the establishment o f a futuristic telephone network to communicate with the dead. This research paper begins with the first English translation o f the story ever and it ends with the original German version.
In between, the interpretative essay offers a close analysis o f "Die Resurrection Co,"
which foregrounds a resurrective reading o f modem electronic media technologies and which stresses how these media have transformed the writing o f the history o f technology. In a number o f scenarios, "An Essay at Resurrection" contests a traditional historical reading or a systems approach to the story which would overlook the resurrective dimensions o f the media technological object o f the study. The essay takes up a number o f issues which focus on the production and the generation o f the text in terms o f the media technological turn towards resurrection (i.e., pseudonymity, relation o f technology and the occult, the use o f parable, etc.). The article offers a contribution to an interdisciplinary study o f media technology and literature on the level o f their shared (trans)figurative structures.
WALTHER RATHENAUS MEDIENTECHNOLOGISCHE WIEDERKEHR VERMITTELT DURCH W. HARTENAUS "DIE RESURRECTION CO?’. EIN ESSAY ÜBER WIEDERERWECKUNG
Zusammenfassung
Unter dem Pseudonym W. Hartenau veröffentlichte der junge Walther Rathenau 1898 eine Kurzgeschichte mit dem Titel "Die Resurrection Co.". Im Grenzbereich von Wissenschaft und Fiktion angesiedelt, handelt der Text von der Einrichtung eines futuristischen Telefonnetzes zur Kommunikation mit dem Jenseits. Am Anfang des vorliegenden Beitrags findet sich eine erstmalige Übersetzung der Kurzgeschichte ins Englische, das Ende nimmt eine Wiedergabe von Rathenaus deutschem Text ein. Der zwischen Übersetzung und Original gestellte interpretierende Essay bietet eine eingehende Analyse der Kurzgeschichte, wobei der Autor die Interpretation moderner Medientechnologien als "Wiedererweckung" in den Vordergrund stellt. Besondere Betonung wird darauf gelegt, wie diese Medien die Geschichtsschreibung der Technologie transformiert haben. In einer Reihe von Szenarios stellt der Autor traditionell historische Lesarten oder eine systemische Herangehensweise an die Kurzgeschichte in Frage, weil beides die Wiedererweckungsdimensionen des medientechnischen Gegenstands von Rathenaus Studie vernachlässigte. Der Essay greift einige Fragestellungen auf, wobei der Autor den Fokus auf Erzeugung und Entwicklung des Textes im Sinne einer medientechnischen Hinwendung zur Wiedererweckung setzt (d.h. Pseudonymität, Verhältnis von Technologie und dem Okkulten, die Verwendung von Parabeln etc.). Mit dem Essay soll ein Beitrag geleistet werden zu einer interdisziplinären Untersuchung von Medientechnologien und Literatur auf der Ebene ihrer gemeinsamen (trans)figurativen Strukturen.
Table of Contents
W. HARTENAU: ’’The Resurrection Co.” 1
Walther Rathenau’s Media Technological Turn as Mediated through W. Hartenau’s ’’Die Resurrection Co.”. An Essay at Resurrection 7
A. Introducing Resurrection 7
1. Media Technology and History 8
2. The Systems Metaphor and Resurrection 8
3.
Technology and Literature 9
B. Instrumentation: Pen/Machine 10
C. Genre: Satirical Literature/Prophetic Technology 11 D. The Corporate Setting: Germany/Dakota:
Major Monopoly/Minor Narrative 13
E. Mechanics: Materialist and Soulless/Ghostly and Alchemical 15 F. Parables of Resurrection: Talmudic and Evangelical 17
G. Authorship: Proper Name/Pseudonym 20
H. The Rainbow Effect: Secular History/Sacred History 24
I. Final Comeback 26
J. Resurrective Hymn 27
W. HARTENAU: Die Resurrection Co. 29
W. HARTENAU: ’’Die Resurrection Co.”
The burial facilities in the city o f Necropolis, Dakota are the best in the United States. A narrow-gauge electric railway travelling at a velocity o f 20 miles per hour leads the corpse onto the graveyard, a dredger (U. S. Patent Number 398,748) digs the grave before the eyes o f the mourners in four minutes flat, the coffin is lifted from the tracks by a revolving crane, and the machine smoothes and flattens out the four-cornered mound with great exactitude. They avoid reading the funeral oration through a loud speaker system. On the contrary, there is an automated jukebox right on the premises o f the burial place where one can hearken to words o f consolation from the most famous preachers o f the English-speaking tongue with the mere deposit o f a twenty cents piece. A mechanical coffin factory borders the burial grounds which includes a grinding shop for gravestones. Their exemplary products satisfy the needs o f even the most fastidious customer.
Elihu Hannibal I. T. Gravemaker was the creator o f this undertaking. At his funeral on M ay 17, 1894, the record was set for internment techniques in the United States. The funeral procession put itself into gear at the stroke o f noon, the burial began at 12:10, the return jour
ney o f the mourners followed seven minutes later, and they met for lunch at 12:25 in the Forty- Sixth Avenue Hotel. At one o'clock, the reports about the funeral appeared simultaneously in the Necropolis Sun and in the Dakota Herald. The auction o f the testator's estate began at one thirty. At four o'clock, they unveiled a granite monument with the image o f the departed on Central Union Square. And a new clubhouse was dedicated at six o'clock in Gravemaker's apartment house in accordance with the provisions o f his last will and testament.
I felt the urge to express my amazement regarding the clever and carefully arranged grounds to the Director who lived in the upper story o f this friendly mortuary. But at the moment when I was about to step into the elevator, I was surprised and even offended by an unpleasant impression. I could not help consulting the director about this incident.
"I am able to appreciate and to esteem your facilities highly," I told him. "Nonetheless I can not conceal that I have come across one piece o f the layout by accident which embarrasses me. What made you desecrate this sanctified place with a telephone booth? I have noticed that the one in the morgue near the chapel is broken. The incessant ringing is quite disturbing.
W hat do you have in mind with that?"
"I am sorry that the door was open," answered the director curtly. "Our guests usually do not notice it otherwise. Unfortunately, I can not give you any further information."
It appeared to be the time to play a trick for which I am grateful to my dear friend in N ew York, the Reverend Tiberius Q. Lewisson. This was a trick—I am sorry to have to say it- -which, while not very noble in nature, appeared appropriate to the occasion.
"Sure. As you wish." I remarked. "In any case, you will have no objection then if I wire
an article to the newspapers which I have the honor to represent—the New York Herald, the Times, the Figaro, and the Berlin Exchange Currier—to appear on the front page tomorrow morning with the headline CORPSE DESECRATION IN DAKOTA. You will allow me to forward three sample copies to you."
After some deliberation, he retorted: "I propose the following deal. You don't publish your impressions before June 15, 1898. That is the day on which our contract with the Resur
rection Co. expires. On that condition, I will give you a complete disclosure immediately.
You can be certain that you will have the sensation o f the year with your article."
Before I proceed with the Director's report, I make a point o f declaring that the present essay was received by the editor o f this magazine bearing a large postal stamp on its envelope which was dated the 16th o f June, 1898.
The Director fulfilled his promise as follows:
"All o f our facilities are guided by the principle o f shortening the distressful period between the demise o f a member o f society and the moment when the survivors can take up their occupations again undisturbed. These certainly laudable ends bring a danger with them.
On July 24th o f last year, the corpse o f an honorable and wealthy man which had been buried eight days earlier was exhumed by order o f a judge because o f the strong suspicion o f peijury, irredeemable falsehood, deceit, pandering, and suicide. Unfortunately, it was a suspicion which turned out to be grounded. The look o f the corpse was shocking. It was lying face down. Many fingers were broken, the nails were tom off, and there were bruises and wounds on the knees and shoulders.
It was evident that the man had been buried alive.
A nervous agitation spread throughout the city as the case became known. The clergy sought to appease the masses by emphasizing that the vengeance and punishment o f Divine Providence had been brought to bear upon these criminal offenses against the dead. The issue was debated. The level o f anxiety increased from befitting at first to senselessness. A few o f the most respectable citizens, the Deputy Mayor, and the Director o f the Church Council committed suicide. N o one knew what to do.
While the columnists entertained the wildest suggestions in the upcoming months, they organized an undertaking in all quietness which promised to solve the horrible controversy in one stroke: the Dakota and Central Resurrection Telephone and Bell Co., a shareholding cor
poration with 750,000 dollars capital. The prospectus brought unparalleled success. Within two hours, the initial capital was oversubscribed on the stock exchange fourteen times. The life insurance company and the orphan administration decided to invest all available means for shares in the new corporation. The daughter o f a high school headmaster threatened the direc
tor o f the syndicate with a revolver because she had not been given enough consideration dur
ing the allotment o f shares.
The idea o f the enterprise appeared to be simple and convincing. Each buried coffin should be linked via electric cable with the administration building. Telephone and electric bell were connected on the lines and each customer could not only report to the administration instantaneously but could also give the necessary orders to his doctor, his banker, and to his family if the occasion arose.
The legislative body o f the corporation resolved by a great majority that the introduction o f safeguards (fuses) should be obligatory, and at once, the city administration granted the Resurrection Co. the exclusive right to install its apparatus for a two year period.
The people's anxiety grew less and less, and even more so, given that no other case o f a premature burial cropped up during the course o f nearly a year. In the same way, interest in the Resurrection Co. weakened and the price o f their stocks sunk on the exchange from 459 to
117 1/2.
Then an unexpected incident occurred. Someone reported to me shortly after dusk on February 23rd that a bell had been ringing in short intervals for the first time. The switch that had been turned on was Number 169. This number astounded me because we had already passed on to Number 1200 at the time. I immediately read the churchyard journal and found out that the inhabitant o f No. 169 was a certain Johnson whom I had known personally. He was a lean old man who caused his tenants great anxiety for a long time and who died from nervous disorders in the end. At the same time, I noted with horror that Mr. Johnson had been resting in the earth for nine months already.
I assumed that something was wrong with the wiring and notified the electrician. He spoke—as is the rule with these people—o f short circuits and earth currents. He unscrewed all the apparatuses and brought the house into an unbelievable state o f disarray. After three days, he explained the damages away and charged me 275 dollars. In the meantime, you can rest assured that Nr. 169 rang each evening in the customary intervals.
N ow I made my official report. The commission ordered an exhumation upon the recommendation o f the Resurrection Co. This was executed, but without any solution. Mr.
Johnson showed the normal disposition o f a man who had been buried for nine months. The electrical apparatus worked to perfection and only the coffin was in need o f small repairs.
They finished shutting up the grave—and Number 169 was to be heard from no more.
The Resurrection Co. was not afraid to publicise this deplorable incident in spite o f the official established findings. They explained that Mr. Johnson was prevented from returning to life through the fault o f my administration and they put my picture in all the morning papers with the headline, THE CEM ETERY MURDERER OF NECROPOLIS. Two thousand five hundred Resurrection shareholders and other interested persons held a protest demonstration.
I would not have given two cents to save my job if my w ork as an election agent in the city district where Mr. Johnson's tenants lived would not have been indispensable for the govem-
ment. In addition, his survivors, whose interests have to be considered next, gave no value to Mr. Johnson's resurrection.
The following case was more serious. Perhaps fourteen days after Johnson's reburial, Number 289, a Miss Simms (who had not enjoyed a special reputation or a particular calling in her lifetime) rang in the evening at the usual time. She was already with us for many months as well. According to the new office directives o f the commission, I instructed my inspector to call back Miss Simms although I took the proposition o f dialing a lady who was partaking o f a better life for a long time as a ridiculous if not a frivolous idea.
You should have seen how the inspector came back! Pale and hollow-cheeked, the eyes popping out o f his head like glass balls. I can only say that his look reminded me o f Mr. John
son. "Well, what's the matter?" I asked. "Well, I called and put the telephone to my ear and I'll be damned if it did not answer 'Hello' quite clearly out o f the apparatus. But with a voice like out o f a hollow thorax". . . I went down myself and I screamed into the telephone: "By the devil, what do you want?" . . . And do you know what that old spinster answered me? "I would like be connected with Number 197."
The Resurrection Co. was in a predicament this time. Both the clergy and the Theo- sophical Club already had thrown out the question whether the subterranean telephone net
w ork might not disturb the holy rest o f the dead. When the incident became known, the relig
ious party had w on the day and that was most dangerous for us.
There came an agreement with the standing corporation whereby the press volunteered and pledged 50,000 dollars to remove all the telephones in the next fourteen days. They could not, it goes without saying, take away the electric bells because that would have meant com
plete disentanglement. Inconceivably, our administration was not willing to make the conces
sion that these accursed bells could be disconnected without a penalty for breach o f contract.
We are even obligated today to let them be serviced by one o f their own employees.
Miss Simms stopped ringing as soon as she realized that verbal interaction was no longer possible. But a new correspondent announced himself soon and, remarkably enough, only in rainy weather. It occurred to one o f my people to go down in order to see what was wrong.
It happened that the mound was spilling over on account o f a mistake in the drainage equip
ment. As I discovered later, the customer had been predisposed to a severe case o f rheuma
tism. The mistake was removed immediately and there was peace and quiet yet again.
But it was soon revealed that it had been a mistake to pay heed to this complaint. N ow they came on all sides with private wishes and grumblings. One guy called up because the sewer door wasn't closed; another's bench had become rickety; a third needed fresh gravel; the fourth had earthworms. The activities o f the cemetery staff had tripled in one season, and the standard assignments had risen fourfold. The ramblings o f a neighborhood cat was enough for individual customers to alarm the administrators in the middle o f the night.
The final stage in this sad development was caused by a completely routine case. An old unmarried woman signaled constantly with no recognizable motive. There remained nothing to do but to notify the survivors in the nicest way and they found out that an angry relative had laid a myrtle wreath on the grave in a revengeful allusion to an earlier incident. It was easy to calm down the old woman but this resulted in our customers bringing the commissions and omissions o f their survivors into the circles o f their complaints in general. For example, one woman finds that her four step-sons advance to the state o f half-mourning too early. She rings up between 6 and 8 daily. A writer is not satisfied with the gravestone inscription. A tele
phone administrator wires a critique o f his successor in the short and long intervals o f a type o f M orse Code. There is an example o f a particularly scandalous interference in the family rela
tions o f the survivors which persists even until today. It concerns the case o f a certain Hopkins whom I can not fail to name and specify on these grounds.
Mr. Hopkins, a sixty-five year old and very wealthy man, left behind a wife o f about thirty-two years o f age. It was to be expected that she would find devoted admirers. And certain family friends felt that Mr. Hopkins should not have been entitled to take the least offense. The bell went haywire hardly three months after the burial. When Mrs. Hopkins re
ceived knowledge o f this, she was wretched. The coincidence between the jealous outbursts o f her late husband and the visits o f her lovers was quite conspicuous. Sometimes the spouse called in the morning, sometimes in the afternoons, but mostly in the evenings from 7 to 11 (the most animated and liveliest time). And the telephone rattled for a quarter o f an hour non
stop in his own personal, cadenced tempo shifts. The poor woman withdrew by taking a trip across the ocean with her admirer for many months on end. She came back just early yester
day—and this infamous Hopkins had called four times already last night! " The story be
gan to tire me. The Director lost himself in details.
"Now, what are your views concerning the future?" I asked.
"It can't go on like this in the long term. We're completely overworked. I've spoken to my brother who is the manager o f the Forty-Sixth Avenue Hotel. He tried to make it clear to me that his guests might be even more demanding and he suggested to raise the prices. But that is difficult. My hope lies in the termination o f the contract with the Resurrection Co."
"But you told me that the existence o f the corporation is endangered."
"Perhaps not any more at this moment. It is under negotiation in three more cities now.
Our Commission issues shining recommendations for the Company. We are also ready to offer indemnification. But above all, there lies a even more compelling reason. One o f the Directors is a high-grade consumptive who has been given up by the doctors. Naturally, he will be buried here. His colleagues could not get along with this man in his lifetime— Now, just think about it, when he gets the bell into his hand!"
That was clear to me and I understood why the cemetery administrator had made me keep silent until June 15, 1898.
Someone cabled me from New York that the sick Director has recovered through the application o f Dr. Hamilton S. Myerstine's Hemotosis (available in all pharmacies). He trav
elled all the way from Necropolis, D akota to Key West by bicycle and they are now conducting tests for yellow fever. The Resurrection Co. is now occupied with the execution o f eight cemetery installations in the United States and it has raised its capital to 7 1/2 million dollars.
Some bank institutions whose aim it is to represent the interests o f German capital in America are just in the process o f securing sizeable shares o f this great undertaking.
Given these circumstances, I look upon it as a timely task from the economic point o f view to provide information about the actions o f this company in so far as possible.
(1898)
Translated by Louis Kaplan All Rights Reserved
W alter Rathenau's Media Technological Turn as Mediated through W. Hartenau’s ’’Die Resurrection Co.”. An Essay at Resurrection
A. Introducing Resurrection
"The horrible news? D o yo u mean something other than Rathenau's murder? It is incom
prehensible that they let him live so long.
Already there were rumors o f his murder two months ago in P rague."
Franz Kafka to Max Brod, June 30, 19221 There is always something in the nature o f the unnatural act o f political assassination or relig
ious crucifixion—the way in which it cuts o ff a public or popular life before its time—which makes the desire for a resurrection o f the mourned object that much more acute. One might even say that it is the deadly deed itself which enables and empowers the resurrection o f the sacred political or religious body and which guarantees the necrological attention devoted to it in the gift o f an after-life. Or, given a literal Kafkaesque turn o f events, the terminal rumors might be strong enough to trigger the tidings o f resurrection even before the horrible catastro
phe itself and in one's own lifetime.2 In the case o f Walther Rathenau, the gunfire in the Grünewald on June 24, 1922 transfigured a man o f too many qualities into the sacrificial sym
bol o f Weimar Germany and, in prophetic hindsight, into one o f the first o f too many identity- related losses in the oncoming era o f organized fascism.
This essay addresses then a figure who bears a dramatic and unique relationship to resur
rection through his untimely demise and through the historical disaster to come. But, in this particular case study, the question o f resurrection will not be confined to the biographical narrative. For there is a strange text in the Rathenau literary remains which speculates about the problematic o f resurrection under the title o f "Die Resurrection Co." and which is signed in the pseudonym o f W. Hartenau. This is nothing less than a latter day attempt to resolve the spiritual riddle o f resurrection by applying the instruments o f an age o f media technology. W.
Hartenau's "Die Resurrection Co." reviews the setting up o f a telephone network to communi
cate with the dead and to service the entire necropolitan area. In this way, the text uses the 1 The German text reads: "Die Schreckensnachrichten? Meinst Du etwas anderes als Rathenaus Ermordung?
Unbegreiflich, daß man ihn so lange leben ließ, schon vor zwei Monaten war das Gerücht von seiner Ermordung in Prag." Franz Kafka, Briefe: 1902-1924 (Frankfurt, 1973), p. 378. All translations in this essay are my own transfigurations from the German into the American.
2 The rumors of assassination are planted prophetically into the subtext of "Die Resurrection Co." itself when the "director of the syndicate" (not hard to identify or resurrect) is threatened amid an economic panic and crisis by a dissatisfied customer who can not get enough of the corporate action.
telephonic medium to bring the problematic o f media technological resurrection into the foreground. This story is a demonstration (or a living proof) o f the strange affinity which con
nects modem media technology and a spectral domain o f resurrection (whether in its spiritist or occultist forms). M odem media technologies always generate a site o f resurrection and reproduction, a wave o f feedback and playback, a ghost dance o f noise and signals. Operating in a simulated limbo, the electronic media transmit the haunting return o f the absent in a veri
table raising o f the dead. Without a fundamental acknowledgement o f electronic media as resurrective and transfigurative. there will be no way to hear or overhear "Die Resurrection Co." nor to have access to the legion o f technological subjects which it has programmed in multiple generations.
The following speculations are guided by the premise that "Die Resurrection Co." can not be read nor interpreted without speculating upon how media technological resurrection has transformed the scene o f (its) reading and interpretation in general. This resurrective turn will be felt along three lines o f inquiry.
1. M edia Technology and History
The first consideration involves how electronic media technologies have transformed the study o f history. The media technologies have invaded the classical space o f history and its linear accounting. Indeed, media technologies call for a rethinking o f history as a particular type o f resurrective technology. But, the resurrection o f the past in the present is no longer the only viable sequencer. Through the reversibilities o f time, the simulations o f the real, and the trans
figurations o f death posed by modern media technologies, the present too will have become resurrectable on the cutting room floor o f edits and splices. The cause and effect assumptions o f linear historiography have given way to time's special effects (whether fast forward, slow motion, or delay feed) as relayed via the reproductive strategies o f the media technologies.3 This essay raises some o f the questions which arise when "Die Resurrection Co." (or its his
tory) is rerun through the transfigured light o f electronic media technology and its haunting logic o f resurrection.
2. The Systems M etaphor and Resurrection
In a recent essay entitled "Walter Rathenau: system builder", the historian and sociologist o f technology Thomas P. Hughes has argued that the life and w ork o f the biographical subject can only be understood in relation to the ruling metaphor which constructs the large techno
logical system. "I have maintained the thesis in this essay that Rathenau the engineer and the 3 Throughout there is a indebted complicity and unconscious rapport with Avital Ronell's The Telephone Book; Technology, Schizophrenia. Electric Speech (Lincoln, Nebraska, 1989) as an exemplar of writing and wiring the telephone in line with the media technological problematic and its historical repercussions.
industrial theorist thought in systems and was a 'system builder' himself."4 As it turns out, Hughes uses "Die Resurrection Co." as a case study to support his argument. While the sys
tems rhetoric frames technology in terms o f order, design, and totality, the essay at resurrec
tion spells out the desire for closure at the basis o f this systemization o f Rathenau. It exposes how resurrection and an unaccountable logic o f the return problematizes the desire for control, order, and totality when dealing with large technological systems and Rathenau's life and work.
In this manner, the rhetoric o f resurrection attempts to think media technology through what and as what evades systematicity and totalization.
J. Technology an d Literature
The third point o f emphasis in a resurrective approach involves an insistence upon certain types o f affinities between technology and literature. This does not mean that one must understand technology in literature or technology as literature. The connection is rather on the structural level in how both the technological and the literary machines share a space that thrives upon figuration and transfiguration as the incessant m otor o f their operations. The reproductive structures o f both literary mimesis and technological media reanimate a return or a "coming back to life". It is not that this essay imports contemporary literary theory in order to illumi
nate the technological dynamics in "Die Resurrection Co." It is rather an exploration o f the conjunctures wherein literary and technological terms cross over—and particularly in matters related to resurrection—in order to offer a reading o f this singular text.
The present exhumation can not escape the fact that its own memorializing labors par
ticipate in or engage the resurrection company on one level. These speculations return to the writing o f history as a practice that recovers—a veritable technology o f salvage operations which are undertaken to recover lost meaning and identity. This consuming exhuming practice can not help but raise ghosts and spectres as an essential and unconscious by-product o f its digging and dredging up o f the dead. The historical excavation party is the Resurrection Co..
According to the terms o f this assessment, the measure o f speculative success for such an inquiry lies in both the quality and the quantity o f the ghosts which are raised during the dig
ging. The goal o f this essay is not an exorcism to drive out the ghosts, but rather a summoning and an invocation o f resurrective possibilities.
The following set o f scenarios offers a variety o f vantage points to access "Die Resur
rection Co." Rather than advancing an argument, it provides an ongoing comparative analysis o f two approaches which underscore a technological divide in reading—between a history o f media technology and a media technological history, between a myth o f system informed by 4 "Ich habe in diesem Aufsatz die These vertreten. Rathenau, der Ingenieur und Industrietheoretiker, habe in
Systemen gedacht und sei selbst 'system builder' gewesen." Thomas P. Hughes, "Walther Rathenau: 'system builder"1, in T. Buddensieg, T. Hughes, J. Kocka, eds., Ein Mann Vieler Eigenschaften: Walther Rathenau und die Kultur der Moderne (Berlin, 1990), p. 28.
totality and a system o f myths informed by resurrection, between the study o f technology in literature and a literary-technological transfigurative convergence. These scenarios map out W alter Rathenau's media technological turn as mediated through W. Hartenau's "Die Resur
rection Co." in an essay at resurrection.
B. Instrumentation: Pen/Machine
The initial pre-electric technological prejudice involves the type o f instrumentation which went into the making o f "Die Resurrection Co.". It takes up the use or the misuse o f the pen. If one looks closely at Hughes' description o f "Die Resurrection Co.", there is a quite literal attempt to frame its instrumentation in line with an older media technology. Quite simply, Hughes' scripterly reading assumes that the story has been written via pen and ink. With its emphasis upon this traditional mode o f inscription, the argument attempts to read the object o f study as an unproblematic piece o f literature flowing from authorial genius to pen and paper. It privi
leges a mode o f literary production untouched by the contamination o f mechanized parts.
Operating like a recording device (despite) himself, Hughes' account has been resurrected through a second hand. He introduces (or returns to) "Die Resurrection Co." as follows:
"Koonz gives a summary o f a parody o f American funerals from Rathenau's pen"5 (my empha
sis).
But any investigation o f the w ork habits o f Rathenau—not to mention Hartenau (the double or author who signs the story)—show that this instrumental preference could not be the case. For this body o f texts, the pen is not mightier than the sword nor any other inscription device. The figure o f the "Feder" is literally a slip o f the pen.6 This remark is an attempt to sidestep what transforms literature into the daily outputs o f the technological media. Shadow
ing Bram Stoker's vampire killers, the preferred mode o f inscription avoids the pen and oper
ates via mechanical dictation.7 The authorial voice will translate into the necessity o f
"Koonz gibt eine Zusammenfassung einer Parodie amerikanischer Bestattungen aus Rathenaus Feder."
Hughes, p. 26. Working in the second generation, Hughes acknowledges that he takes his cues from Claudia Ann Koonz, Walther Rathenau's Vision of the Future: The Etiology of an Ideal, Dissertation, Rutgers University, pp. 67-69. Given the confusions in this reading (to which we will return), there must be an unreli-able source somewhere in this telephone network. For starters, the reader is informed in Footnote 59 of'system builder' that "Die Resurrection Co." was published in (and I copy) "Die Zukunft VI (9. Juli 1918), S. 72-78." This fast forwarding and re-recording from the year 1898 to 1918 brings the discrepancy of one generation—what is always at stake in the practice of the resurrective technologics-to the forefront.
6 This would follow the structural lines of Friedrich Kittler's Discourse Networks 1800/1900 (Stanford, Ca., 1990). In other words, the slip of the pen imposes the outmoded constructs of 1800 literary penmanship unto 1900 media inscriptions.
7 Bram Stoker, Dracula (1897/1979). This comment is directed primarily towards Dr. Seward who brandishes a "Phonograph Diary" as his weapon in the modem Vampire Wars. For a bite-sized reading of the staging of the vampirical effects as a media war that pits old and new resurrective technologies to the finish (and thereafter), see Friedrich Kittler, "Draculas Vermächtnis" in Dieter Hombach, hrsg., Mit Lacan, ZETA 02, (Berlin, 1982), pp. 103-136.
(unspecified) machines for resurrection. As one commentator records it: "the author dictated the thoughts which were preoccupying him at that time into the machine and did not make them the object o f an artistic reworking."8 The art and artifice o f a literary treatment yield to the resurrective demand o f playback in a transcribed medium. It is the recording medium itself that helps to explain the prodigious literary output o f our multi-talent as well as the rough spots that continue to be heard on the written record, later on. This mechanized logic also works from the perspective o f oral history. Thus, the humorist and essayist Alexander Moszkowski recalls how the stentorious speeches and sparkling tones o f the orator were built for the age o f technical reproduction. "What a shame that one could not record (the speeches) with a stenogram or a phonograph at any time. That would have been an immense project o f an incomparable and sparkling uniqueness."9 This phonographic record gives new biographi
cal insistence to the resounding playlist o f graveyard smashes and hit sermons which are to be found on the cemetery jukebox in Necropolis.
C. Genre: Satirical Literature/Prophetic Technology
There is a genealogy o f criticism which reads "Die Resurrection Co." as a satire, pure and simple. This is how it appears to its primary reader and editor, Maximilian Harden, even before its publication in Die Zukunft. As a post-script to a letter which bears a cryptic and fractional signature ("Your 3/4 dead H."), Harden guides the hand o f his ffiend(s) to the return o f the text in the following manner. "I request the satire back after friendly editing. Oh, this Hartenau!!!"10 Ninety odd years later, Hughes' essay not only classifies "Die Resurrection Co." in the same vein, it even invokes a system (or a way o f life) as the direct object o f its satirical thrust. "Also for the satire upon American capitalism, 'Resurrection Co.'"11 A generic reading is bolstered by the further remark that this soulless text knows only the doubling and duplicitous devices o f parody ("the soul does not come forth in this parody"12). If one were to globalise this set o f instructions as the categorically imperative way in which to read the narra
tive intentions, then "Die Resurrection Co." is not to be taken seriously. The reader can do nothing but laugh at the institution o f this telephone exchange to and from the dead. H ow 8 "...daß der Verfasser die Gedanken, die ihn zu jeder Zeit beschäftigen, in die Maschine diktiert hat, und sie nicht zum Gegenstand einer künstlerischen Ausarbeitung gemacht hat." Joh. E. Hohlenberg, "Ein Besuch bei Walther Rathenau" (July 1919) in: Hans Dieter Heilige und Emst Schulin, ed., Walther Rathenau- Gesamtausgabe (hereafter, WRGA) (Munich, 1977), Vol. II, p. 789.
9 "Wie schade, daß man sie nicht jederzeit in Steno- oder Phonogramm festhalten konnte. Das wäre ein immenses Werk von unvergleichlich funkelnder Eigenart geworden." Alexander Moszkowski, "In memoriam Walther Rathenau," in Die Neue Rundschau 33, pp. 810-814. In WRGA. Vol. VI, p. 660.
10 "Die Satire erbitte ich nach freundlicher Korrektur zurück. O dieser Hartenau!!!” Maximillian Harden to Walther Rathenau, 30 June 1898. In WRGA Vol. VI, p. 315.
11 "Auch für die Satire auf den amerikanischen Kapitalismus 'Resurrection Co.'."
12 "... in dieser Parodie kommt die Seele nicht vor." Hughes, p. 27.
ever, there is another more speculative economy at w ork which resists any easy classification o f the text as belonging to the parodic or the satirical genre. And it is here that the Resurrec
tion Co. will ask to be taken dead seriously. Amid the laughter invoked by this necrological telecommunications network, one begins to wonder about its possible implementation. It is this rather naive and fantastic perspective o f a scientific imaginary as the resource for future technological invention that a purely satirical reading excludes. It is as if the systems approach were unwilling to risk the reception o f the call that comes from the voices beyond the grave or to bring them into the terms o f technological planning. The resurrection will have come (again) to transfigure the satirical and parodic text into other more visionary and prophetic terms. One must not forget that Rathenau played out this prophetic role in many guises both in his lifetime and his after-life. This receives support from Fritz Mauthner's review o f Rathenau's futuristic book o f the shape o f things to come, Von Kommenden Dingen (1917), which was written in life during wartime.13 In his assessment o f Rathenau, Mauthner recalls the quick stutter step which resurrects a Biblical prophet as a heretical dean (and vice versa): "It is only a step from the prophet to the satirist, from Jesias to Swift."14 Setting up an echo chamber, one monitors how the satirical and the prophetic tones o f "Die Resurrection Co." operate as a built-in feedback mechanism. Furthermore, any unilateral satirical reading o f this text will be undercut to an even greater extent when one recalls that the attempt to communicate with the dead via telephone or another medium was a vital part o f the overall resurrective technological research program o f that era. "Project Deadspeak" can not be confined to the seances o f spiri
tualist mediums nor the gadgets o f psychopathic crackpots. One discovers that no one less a figure than the Wizard o f Menlo Park, Thomas Alva Edison, sought at the end o f his illustrious career "to construct an instrument for communicating with departed spirits."15 The central player in the major modem resurrective media (whether via phonograph, kinemascope, or the new and improved microphonic version o f the telephone transmitter) saw no internal contra
diction in attempting to raise the dead in this other instrumental manner. It is surprising that the systems approach overlooks this collaboration o f technological research interests as embodied in the corporate identities represented by the proper names Edison and Rathenau when taking stock o f the Resurrection Co. especially since its analysis o f American and German industrial enterprise relies so heavily on the figure o f the inventor.16 From this perspective, the Resur
13 Fritz Mauthner, ''Ein Buch des Krieges," Berliner Tageblatt (22 March 1917). In WRGA. Vol. II, p. 587.
14 "Es ist nur ein Schritt vom Prophet zum Satiriker, von Jesaias zu Swift." Ibid.
15 This direct citation comes from the anonymous author of the report on "Communication (Between Living and Dead)" in Leslie Shepard, ed., Encyclopedia of Occultism and Parapsychology (Detroit, 1984), Vol. I, p. 247. The same anecdote can be found buried in so many words in a footnote of Martin Gardner's Fads and Fallacies in the Name of Science (New York, 1957), p. 312. "Before he died in 1931, Edison was working on a sensitive piece of apparatus for communicating with departed spirits."
16 See Thomas Hughes, "Edison the Hedgehog: Invention and Development" (pp. 18-46) in Networks of Power: Electrification in Western Society 1880-1930 (Baltimore, Md., 1983). This chapter makes no references to the hedgehog's resurrective researches.
rection Co. would embody the shared corporate hopes and speculations o f two electrical agencies seeking to stimulate the market for the growing telecommunications industry.17
But the research program o f spirit communication by mechanical means did not die with Edison nor Rathenau-Hartenau. The history o f media technology reveals any number o f revivals. While recorded in order, each o f these technological case studies displays the resur- rective programming o f a (virtual) reality that risks the linearity o f the historical narrative. The foundation o f the Spirit Electronic Communication Society (S.E.C.S.) (1949) and the Teledyne Research Unit (1952) in Great Britain provide just two examples o f experimental attempts to develop these methods. In the 1960's, the so-called electric voice phenomenon as pursued by Konstantin Raudive and Friedrich Jürgenson moved the forefront o f resurrectional researches to new media (i.e., tape decks and radios). Adding another layer to the resurrective apparatus, these transmissions were purported to reveal communications from dead individuals when reproduced on playback. M ost recently, the investigations into the so-called SPIRICOM system using a specialized transceiver as developed by the MetaScience Foundation Inc. in N orth Carolina provide the latest instalment in the plan to incorporate the telephonic network outlined in "Die Resurrection Co."18 Each o f these research efforts underscores the limits o f a purely satirical reading o f the text which would banish it to the beyond o f pure fiction.
D. The Corporate Setting: Germany/Dakota; Major Monopoly/Minor Narrative
This publication and translation has resurrected "Die Resurrection Co." to speak the (inter-) national language o f its monetary and narrative action. "Die Resurrection Co." is a kind o f economic advisory report for the folks back home. It offers a prospectus on a new American technological undertaking for potential German investment. The problematics o f translation and exchange are built into the German version. For instance, the text is interspersed with for
eign accents like "lunch" and "customer" which serve to import a distinctive American taste.
The geographic coordinates undertake a transatlantic voyage from the far reaches o f the American imagination (whether inscribed as Necropolis, Dakota or Key West, Florida) to the European community—the financial capital(s) o f Paris, London, Berlin—with New York serving as the mediating site o f exchange. This plays itself out linguistically in a graphic reading o f the
17 One might even conclude that the late Edison was inspired by Rathenau-Hartenau (whether in life or in death) and "Die Resurrection Co." in pursuing his research in the 1920's. After all, one has on record Edison's unconditional admiration of Rathenau as an almost super-human prodigy in terms of the range of his knowledge. As Edison once g(r)asped, "He knows more than I will ever comprehend." ("Er weiß mehr, als ich je begreifen werde." Quoted by Eberhard Schmieder in Arnold Harttung, ed., Schriften, (Berlin, 1965), p. 181. This judgment could explain Edison's own failure to construct the machine for communica
tion with the departed spirits on this side of the great beyond.
18 All of these technological facts and figures are transmitted via "Communication (Between Living and Dead)"
multi-tongued title where the modem industrial "Die" o f Deutschland and the "Co." o f D acota (corporate America) are divided by the "Resurrection" o f the traditional Latin. To track paral
lel lines, Hartenau's relay o f resurrective telephone messages arises about the same time that Marconi was conducting transatlantic experiments in the rival medium o f wireless telegraphy in order to transmit signals from the New to the Old W orld.19
The avowedly American geo-economic setting o f "The Resurrection Co." is symptomatic o f the European turn to the rising industrial giant as privileged site to play out the mutations and permutations o f the technological imagination. In this connection, one thinks o f the figure which Edison cuts back on the Continent in Count Villiers de L'Isle-Adam's Tomorrow's Eve (1886)20. While it remains uncertain whether W. Hartenau visited America, there is a letter which bears the signature o f a young engineer named Walther Rathenau from New York City in the summer o f 1896. In addition to the place setting, the biographical writing shows the kind o f electrical company that the young man was keeping and the genial or psychic vibrations he was picking up at a time close to the rewiring o f the Resurrection Co. The son reports to the familial high command with the late-breaking business news: "I hope to speak with Edison about Sussman's business. Tesla told me that he is not in the least ready with his new light."21 The choice o f D akota is also tuned into the American pattern that technological sophistication no longer required an urban setting nor city planning. By placing the action in the dead zones o f the frontier territory, Hartenau stresses the connection between Western expansion and the latest satellite hook ups. After all, the phone lines were solidly in place for communication between Boston to Milwaukee by 1892. The no man's land o f Necropolis, Dakota provides the perfect opportunity to test the twin tendency o f interconnectedness and decentralization instituted by tele-technologies operating at long distance. Coincidentally, the dead beat setting o f "Die Resurrection Co." runs parallel to the fragmentary narrative lines o f Karl Rossman in Kafka's Amerika in his wanderings from New Y ork to the high-tech natural theater ("Naturtheater") o f Oklahoma.22
Nevertheless, the patterns o f Americanization in the story can not be equated with a con
cept o f monopoly. There are any number o f confusions in the monopolistic and totalizing way in which Hughes recounts the story that do not coincide with the facts and the dynamics o f 19
20 21
22
According to the legal records, Marconi's Wireless Telegraph and Signal Company was incorporated in Great Britain in 1897.
Count Philippe Auguste Mathias Villiers de l'lsle Adam, Tomorrow's Eve, trans. R.M. Evans (Urbana, 111., 1982).
"Lieber Papa! Ich hoffe mit Edison über Bussmans Angelegenheiten zu sprechen. Tesla sagte mir, daß er mit seinem neuen Licht noch lange nicht fertig ist," Walther Rathenau to Emil Rathenau, 26 June 1896. In Walther Rathenau, Briefe. (Dresden, 1926), Vol. I, p. 36.
In the last (but not the last) chapter, "Das Naturtheater von Oklahoma", of Kafka's unfinished novel Der Verschollene (1914), we leam that Karl Rossman is taken into the service by the Nature Theater as a technician ("Technischer Arbeiter" because of his training as an engineer. The plot sounds very familiar.
In Franz. Kafka, Amerika (Frankfurt, 1989), p. 237
resurrection in Hartenau's text nor with the company that demands a come back. The Resur
rection Co. is not a monopoly. It does not control all the burial facilities in the United States.
It is not a giant (neither "riesig" nor "Riesenmonopol"). And it has nothing at all to do with the Bell system. Ironically, in the pursuit o f monopoly, the resurrecting story comes back in an
other form through this rather inventive reading. "Because o f the oversupply o f telephones, American Telephone and Telegraph has made an agreement with the Resurrection Company to put a telephone in every coffin."23 But the surplus lies in the interpretation: for it is rather the Dakota and Central Resurrection Telephone and Bell Co. which undertakes the installation. In resurrecting the ghost o f Graham Bell, Hughes overlooks how the proper name has been transmuted into a common noun in spite o f capitalization. While the systems building approach seeks a monopolistic reading o f "Die Resurrection Co.", its distortions o f the story are resurrective in spite o f itself. It leads to Hughes' monopolistic conclusion that "Die Resur
rection Co." depicts nothing less than a "resurrection system" ("Auferstehungssystem"). "It leads simply to mechanization in the American style—to the control, ordering, and systematiza
tion o f death and resurrection."24 But one will have to wonder how a "resurrection system"
could operate at all if and when resurrection elicits the unexpected risks o f a ghostly return which resists systematization. All in all, the mega-coordinates o f the systems approach trample upon a minor narrative whose resurrective powers record the impossibility o f its totalization.
E. Mechanics: Materialist and Soulless/Ghostly and Alchemical
Walther Rathenau considered his most important work to be the full-length treatise, Zur Mechanik des Geistes (1913). While written fifteen years before, W. Hartenau's "Die Resur
rection Co." might be understood in retrospect as a literal explication o f his soulmate's book title. O f course, this requires taking the "Geist" in all possible senses. The Dakota and Central Resurrection Telephone and Bell Co. institutes a ghostly mechanism which is a mechanism for ghosts at the same time 25 The mechanism haunts in the former instance as ghostly because the electrical communication depends upon the resurrection o f a disembodied absence. It haunts in the latter instance as a mechanism for ghosts because it is a communications medium used by the departed spirits o f Necropolis.26
23 "Wegen des Überangebots an Telefonen hat American Telephone und Telegraph mit der Auferstehungs- gesellschaft eine Übereinkunft getroffen, in jeden Sarg ein Telefon zu legen." Hughes, p. 27.
24 "...es geht lediglich um Mechanisierung im amerikanischen Stil, um Kontrolle, Ordnung und Systematisie
rung von Tod und Auferstehung," Ibid.
23 At the point of the complete annunciation of Hartenau's corporate identity, one must incorporate the name of a public service company in a sister medium which appears to run along even more sinister lines in Henry Miller's Tropic of Capricorn (Paris, 1937). This entity bears the name of The Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company of North America. My thanks to Bemward Joerges for his calling my attention to this message unit.
26 Friedrich Kittler stresses the latter resonance when he connects this piece of "Science Fiction" with the
Hughes' reading o f Rathenau argues that his writings provide an explanation and a romantic reaction to the industrial age o f mechanism and mechanization. This takes on a humanistic cast "in so far as he saw human relations and rituals endangered through mechani
zation."27 In response to the dehumanisation o f the modem mechanism, Rathenau seeks ref
uge in a revival o f the "Geist" and the soul. This viewpoint reifies the dichotomy between the materialist mechanism and the otherworldly realm o f the spirit. It also serves to reinforce the reading o f "Die Resurrection Co." as a parody which deplores the soulless manner in which burial rituals have become mechanized or demystified in the materialist world and which mocks the way in which the spiritual problem o f resurrection has been converted into a corporate body or a joint stock company in the Gilded Age o f capitalist accumulation.
There is no denying that the authorial signature o f Walther Rathenau accredits this rote mechanical reading in many instances. Nevertheless, it is important to dig up another line in a corpus o f texts bearing so many signatures which comes back to haunt the smooth running o f the Rathenau mechanism. For the soulless interpretation ignores how any sharp dividing line between the material and the spiritual (or between life and death) will be problematized on account o f the playback o f the resurrective media technologies in question. It is reminiscent o f the electrician's report which explains away the underground disturbances in Necropolis with the naturalist's narrative o f earth currents and short circuits. The mechanical view overlooks the strange distension o f disembodied voices and visions operating through the materialities o f communication which transfigures soul into mechanism.28 Indeed, the annual report o f the D akota and Central Resurrection Telephone and Bell Co. announces to its shareholders and to all prospective investors that the ghosts have invaded their machines.
For the age o f mechanization and mass production is also the age o f electrical alchemy—
"Elektrische Alchymie (Elektrochemie und verwandte Gebiete)."29 So runs the occult title and the applied sub-title o f a lecture and demonstration which the A.E.G. medium held at the Post Museum in early 1900 attended by his majesty, Kaiser Wilhelm II. Assuming the roles o f sor
cerer's apprentice and court magician, this same Walther Rathenau stirs up the witch's brew o f m odem alchemy ("Hexenkessel moderner Alchymie"30) in terms o f the state o f the art in electro-technologies. Through a combination o f show and tell, he promotes the latest crazes
27 28
29 30
general technological demand for "messages from the realm of the dead" ("Botschaften aus dem Totenreich") in Grammophon Typewriter Film (Berlin, 1986), p. 23.
"... inwiefern er menschliche Beziehungen und Rituale durch die Mechanisierung gefährdet sah." Hughes, p. 26.
This plugs into the collection edited by Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K. Ludwig Pfeiffer, Materialität der Kommunikation (Frankfurt, 1988). It is not surprising that the first essays of the collection explore the transfiguration of Christian theological concepts in modem technological media—the becoming flesh of the text ("Die Fleischwerdung des Wortes in der Körperlichkeit des Textes") and the communion of machine communication ("Von der Kommunion der Körper zur Kommunikation der Maschinen").
"Electrical Alchemy: Electrical Chemistry and Related Disciplines." In Walther Rathenau, Nachgelassene Schriften. Vol. II, (Berlin, 1928), pp. 385-403.
Ibid., p. 402.
and the newest waves--Becquerelian, Hertzian, etc. The staging puts on display a series o f electrical wonders which cross up the lines between technology and the occult. They reveal how the new media technologies enlist invisible powers and borderline cases—beyond the realm o f the senses and yet readily at hand. "Obviously, our knowledge stumbles everywhere on bor
ders which are not given in nature. For example, certain waves are not visible and certain tones are not hearable; nevertheless, they are at hand."31
The A.E.G. representative reaches the point in the demonstration where the electric company encounters other worlds. "However the events themselves allow the imagination the widest room for play. They recall the legends o f the world o f the spiritists and fairy tales."32 This is the moral o f the story. The technological events (not possibilities) give the imagination the widest possible room for speculation. They recall the sagas o f the spirit (and spiritist) world or even wonderland. Rather than any electro-mechanical short-circuiting o f the spiritual realm, electrical alchemy rewires the signals and transmutes worlds. These remarks bounce back to the proceedings o f "Die Resurrection Co." It is not only that the success o f the underground telephone network catalyzes the Theosophists and the Spiritualists. Hartenau's "Die Resurrec
tion Co." must be seen as a part o f the larger transfiguration which Rathenau describes in and as "Electrical Alchemy." The Resurrection Co. waits in the wings as its next phase. The soul supposed to be endangered by technology is riding on the waves engendered by technology.
F. Parables of Resurrection: Talmudic and Evangelical
The Rathenau writing machines were plugged into the open-circuits o f parable. Through an encounter with both Judaic and Christian versions, this outlet allowed for another kind o f con
frontation with the problematic o f resurrection. While it may sound heretical to certain ears, there are instances in or between the lines o f these cryptic parables which evoke interconnec
tions between the possibility o f resurrection and the tropes o f electronic communication net
works. This investigation illustrates the importance o f the call (Ruf) in the prophetic and the telephonic transmissions. The prophet must keep the lines o f communication open in order to receive and to playback the call o f God. That is the modus operandi o f the prophetic medium.
When one considers the inflammatory title and the contents o f the first essay in the Zukunft,
31 "Unsere Erkenntis (stößt) überall sichtlich an Grenzen, welche nicht in der Natur vorhanden sind. Bei
spielsweise sind gewisse Strahlen nicht sichtbar, gewisse Töne nicht hörbar, aber doch vorhanden." The in
direct citation from Wolfgang Schumann, "Erinnerungen an Walther Rathenau" was published in Berliner Tageblatt. 29 September 1927. In paraphrasing, Schumann goes so far as to sound the following warning regarding Rathenau's speculations: "That indeed sounds like 'Occultism'" ("Das klingt wohl nach 'Okkul
tismus'") See WRGA, Vol. II, p. 746.
32 "Die Vorgänge selbst aber lassen der Phantasie den weitesten Spielraum; sie erinnern an die Sagen der Spiritisten- und Märchenwelt." Op. cit., p. 398.
"Höre Israel!"33, it is observed that the placing o f the call lies at the origin o f what motivates the dispersed and diasporic subject to get on the line in the first place. As paradoxical as it may appear, W. Hartenau places a person-to-people call to Israel (whoever or wherever that is) with the end o f solving the Jewish question through German assimilation.
It is easy to see how the logic o f the prophetic call could be transferred or displaced to the electrical engineering o f the telephonic medium. In the early Talmudic parable "The Angel o f Death" ("Der Engel des Todes"), the pseudo-Biblical verse offers the following aphoristic reflection which equates resurrection and the reception o f the call o f the divine. "Wen Gott ruft, der wird auferstehen."34 ("Who God calls, he will be resurrected.") While the contempo
raneous "Resurrection Co." is preoccupied with the same subjects, the introduction o f the tele
phonic medium appears to put God on hold or at least to act as a technological substitute for divine intervention.35 The Necropolitan aphorism now reads: "He, who will be resurrected, calls."
The plot o f another religious parable also revolves around the grave questions o f sin and possible redemption on the burial grounds. "The Five Sinner" ("Der Fünfsünder") is an histori
cal drama which takes place in Judea after a bloody massacre under the Roman regime. In a direct transgression o f the Judaic law which demands a quick and proper burial, the Roman general issues an order that would let the corpses rot on the battlefield under the penalty o f death. "And he issued a decree for the whole land that no one be allowed to bury the bodies o f the slain under the penalty o f death."36 In these troubled times, the devout Rabbi Meir meets a multiple sinner who has been beaten senseless because he has transgressed this burial prohibi
tion. The man o f many sins reveals: "The Roman slaves have beaten me because I have buried my son."37 It is this courageous act o f civil disobedience which the Rabbi takes as the mark o f the sinner's redemption. Keeping this story in mind, one has to reconsider Hughes' view which interprets the accelerated burial techniques as performed by and upon the illustrious Elihu T.
Hannibal Gravemaker, the founder o f the Resurrection Co., as a grim satire upon the American way o f life. But there is no conflict between church and state here. The prophetic voice o f Hartenau affirms the use o f the latest techniques in necrologic hardware to better observe the religious demand for a quick and proper burial.
In another and undated Talmudic parable "Of the King's Expiation" ("Des Königs Sühne"), the theological problem o f sin is linked with the familiar network o f prophecy, burial, 33 W. Hartenau, "Höre, Israel!" in Die Zukunft 18 (1897), pp. 454-462.
3^ Walther Rathenau, "Der Engel des Todes," in Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1918), Vol. IV, p. 308.
35 This plays off the belated Freudian reading of technology as divine substitution and "prosthetic god" in Sigmund Freud, Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Civilization and its Discontents. (Vienna, 1930), Chapter III.
36 "Und er ließ ein Verbot ausgehen bei Todestrafe über das ganze Land, daß niemand bestatte die Leiber der Erschlagenen." Walther Rathenau, "Der Fünfsünder," in Gesammelte Schriften, Vol. IV, p. 311.
37 "Die Knechte der Römer haben mich geschlagen, darum, daß ich meinen Sohn bestattete." Ibid., p. 312.
and resurrection.38 The King o f Israel murders the prophet Haggai who comes back to haunt him, even visiting his bedside. In an act which hearkens back to the case o f Mr. Johnson in Necropolis, the King attempts to atone for his sin by digging up the dead man in the graveyard and asking the corpse for forgiveness. The living dead comes back, but not with a vengeance.
To the King's horror, the resurrected prophet seals his return with a kiss. The resurrected sense ratios are different in the tw o narratives—sonic vs. tactile. But they share a transfigura
tion o f death through another medium (whether telephonic or cyberspatial). But the dynam
ics o f resurrection exceed the confines o f Talmudic parables written from the perspective o f the Babylonian exile. Even though he did not experience the formalities o f a religious conversion (and thereby follow in the footsteps and life history o f Maximillian Harden), Rathenau never had a problem in making intellectual border crossings into Christianity. Our excellent incor
porator felt at home in theological debates or in more mundane matters portrayed in the par
ables o f the life o f Jesus Christ. There is a story told o f Rathenau which provides insight into the m odem secular life and the hope for the coming o f the Messiah. It might even be a parable about an ominous loss o f the ability to answer the call o f resurrection amid the jamming o f the switchboard from left and right and the risk o f false Messiahs. The Weimarian Apostle speaks out:
"Ah!" he said at the time, "if Jesus Christ would come today and would speak in Neukölln, what do believe the people would say? Have you already heard that interesting orator in Neukölln?"39
This anecdote and its resurrection o f the Messiah in the middle o f a Berlin worker's dis
trict is only one o f many instances where Rathenau entertains the prospect o f a Second Coming o f Jesus Christ. Embracing the Judeo-Christian as a interconnected tradition, Rathenau includes the heretical rabbi from Bethlehem into the pantheon o f his resurrection company.
Naturally, this conviction has to do with his high regard for the ethical model set by Jesus. In distancing his views from both Anti-Semitic and atheistic sources, Rathenau writes to Constantin Brunner in praise o f the latter's book, "Der Judenhaß und die Juden". The second part of the citation is cast in terms o f another call to the people o f Israel which brings the resurrection o f Christ into the framework o f a powerful spiritual network which bridges faiths.
"Through your powerful and controversial sermon, you have forced Paganism to liberate Christ. Summon (Rufen Sie) the Jews to enter into the Jewish covenant o f Christ."40
38 Walther Rathenau, "Des Königs Sühne," in Nachgelassene Schriften. Vol. II, pp. 250-252.
39 "Ach," sagte er damals, "wenn heute Jesus Christus käme und in Neukölln spräche, was glauben Sie.
würden die Leute sagen? Haben Sie den interessanten Redner in Neukölln schon gehört?" Stefan Grossman, "Ich war begeistert. Eine Lebensgeschichte" (1931). In WRGA, Vol. II, p. 735.
40 "Mit Ihrer gewaltigen Kontroverspredigt haben Sie den Paganismus gezwungen, Christus herauszugeben. ...
Rufen Sie die Juden auf zum Christusbund der Juden," Walther Rathenau to Constantin Brunner, 1919. In Briefe.
