German science fiction literature encompasses all German-language literary productions, whether of German, Swiss or Austrian origin, in the science fiction genre. German science fiction literature in the modern sense appeared at the end of the 19th century with the writer Kurd Laßwitz, while Jules Verne in France had already written most of his Voyages extraordinaires and H. G. Wells in Great Britain was working on the publication of his novel The Invisible Man.
From 1949 onwards, the two opposing Germanys had a direct impact on the development of anticipation literature on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In Western Germany, the dominant American model of space opera gave rise to a successful series entitled Perry Rhodan. In Eastern Germany, the socialist regime strictly controlled a genre whose only purpose was its philosophical affinity with the socio-historical concept of utopia. It was not until the 1990s that German science fiction literature began to find its place on the international scene, with the novels of young post-war writers such as Andreas Eschbach.
The term "Science Fiction" in German Contemporary German uses the English term Science Fiction, retaining its original pronunciation: [saɪənsˈfɪkʃn̩]. This term can be abbreviated to SF, Sci-Fi or SciFi. While SF commonly refers to science fiction as a whole, the diminutive Sci-Fi is sometimes used more pejoratively to denote a poor-quality commercial genre.
Before the widespread adoption of the word Science Fiction in the late 1950s, the German language had many other specific terms. These included Zukunftsroman ("novel of anticipation"), technischer Zukunftsroman ("novel of technical anticipation"), utopischer Roman ("utopian novel"), utopisch-technischer Roman ("utopian technical novel"), and wissenschaftlich-phantastischer Roman ("scientific fantasy novel").(fr) Daniel Walther (ed.), La science-fiction allemande. Étrangers à Utopolis, Presses Pocket, 1980, p. 11. Between 1949 and 1990, in the German Democratic Republic, the common term was wissenschaftliche Phantastik ("scientific fantasy"), a term directly translated from the Russian expression Научная фантастика.
History of the genre in the German-speaking world
The Precursors
In 1634, German astronomer Johannes Kepler's Somnium was published posthumously, distilling his new ideas on cosmology during an imaginary journey from the Earth to the Moon. Although the text belongs to the genre of science fiction in the almost modern sense of the term, and was written by a German, its original version was written in Latin. Its first German adaptation, Traum von Mond (Moon Dream), was published by Ludwig Günther in 1898, at a time when Europe was witnessing the birth of its first great tales of scientific anticipation.
In the 18th century, in 1744, , an amateur astronomer, imagined a journey to the first moon of Mars in a short story entitled Die geschwinde Reise auf dem Lufft-Schiff nach der Oberen Welt, welche jüngsthin fünff Personen angestellet [...] (The Rapid Journey to the Upper World, recently made by five persons aboard an aerostat). This text is generally considered to be the first German-language science fiction story.Cf. the preface by H. J. de Jong in E. C. Kindermann, Die Geschwinde Reise. Science fiction aus dem Jahr 1744, de Jong publications, Zürich, 2006. Kindermann's account is particularly noteworthy for the attention it pays to the technical aspects of his imaginary journey: description of the sky map, calculation of the distance between Mars and Earth, and use of Franceso Lana-Terzi's theory of vacuum (1670) to move an aerostat through space. The style is characteristic of the late Baroque period, with allegories drawn from Greco-Roman mythology (the appearance of Pheme or the god Bellona) and numerous religious references. The world of Mars is ultimately presented as a religious utopia in which Martians communicate directly with God, without the intercession of the Bible.
German Classicism and Romanticism
In 1755, the philosopher Immanuel Kant published a History of Nature and Theory of Heaven, inspired by Isaac Newton's new theories. The last part of this treatise is devoted in particular to the planets of the Solar System, which, according to Kant, are all necessarily inhabited to allow the migration of souls. This thesis paved the way for interplanetary encounters. At the end of the eighteenth century, in another field, the German writer Jean Paul (1763-1825) wrote a short story entitled Der Maschinenmensch (The Man-Machine), which parodied both the possible mechanization of all human actions (waking up, chewing, writing, etc.) and the materialistic approach of La Mettrie, who had published his eponymous treatise in 1747.(fr) Cf. the preface to this treatise on L'Homme-machine.
Inspired by the English Gothic novel, which combines the marvellous with spirituality in a dark atmosphere mingled with anguish, German Romanticism develops themes that explore the limits of rationality. For example, some of the Night Pieces (1816–1817, Nachtstücke) by E. T. A. Hoffmann (1776-1822) evoke themes akin to science fiction, such as the human-shaped automaton or the trafficking of human organs, as in "The Sandman". But the fantastic literary treatment of these elements always leaves the Hoffmannian hero vacillating between a scholarly interpretation of the facts and his fear of falling victim to terrible hallucinations.Tzvetan Todorov, Introduction à la littérature fantastique, Seuil, Coll. "Points essais", 1976.
This period also saw the publication in 1810 of a futuristic novel by Julius von Voß, a popular and prolific writer at the time. Ini. Ein Roman aus dem einundzwanzigsten Jahrhundert (Ini, a novel for the twenty-first century) tells the story of Guido, a young man who has many adventures around the world to win the heart of his beloved, the African princess Ini. His inventiveness and technical skills enable him to put an end to the fateful war between Europe and Africa. The story is a pastiche of the Bildungsroman, a literary genre typical of classical German literature, full of often convincing technical anticipations in fields as varied as weaponry, military strategy, religion, education, justice, social life and so on.See abstract in: Ritter, Claus, Anno Utopia. Und so war die Zukunft, Verlag Das Neue Berlin, Berlin, 1982, p. 64-96. In 1824, Julius von Voß also published a play in five acts, recounting a journey through time present, past and future. First act: Berlin im Jahre 1724 (Berlin in the year 1724), second and third acts: Berlin im Jahre 1824 (Berlin in the year 1824), fourth and fifth acts: Berlin im Jahre 1924 (Berlin in the year 1924).Ritter, Claus, op. cit., p. 22 and 57.
Industrial revolution and Wilhelminian Prussia: 1870-1918 It was the industrial revolutions of the 19th century, and the advent of technology as a privileged instrument for the progress of human societies, that enabled modern science fiction to take off. In 1871, just as Jules Verne was reaching the peak of his literary output in France, modern German science fiction was born with the first short stories by Kurd Laßwitz (1848-1910) and Albert Daiber (1857-1928). The literary output of Kurd Laßwitz, who was also a publisher, mathematician, and philosopher, culminated in Auf zwei Planeten (On Two Planets), a sweeping novel of almost a thousand pages published in 1897. During a balloon trip to the North Pole, German explorers discovered a secret Martian station. The two civilizations soon come into contact, but an unfortunate incident threatens to lead to war. Between its publication date and its banning by the Third Reich, the novel sold 70,000 copies, a considerable figure for the time.Daniel Walther, op. cit., p. 13. Kurd Laßwitz's work, consisting of three novels and numerous short stories, develops narratives of a technical, philosophical or mathematical nature, largely inspired by neo-Kantianism and, from the early 19th century onwards, the work of psycho-physicist Gustav Fechner.Considered the founding father of modern German science fiction, Kurd Laßwitz gave his name to a literary prize created in 1980, the Kurd-Laßwitz Award, designed to reward the best German science fiction productions on the model of the American Nebula Award.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the birth of Zeppelin airships greatly stimulated the imagination of futurists. Emil Sandt was one of the most famous representatives of this wave of writers who set themselves the task of communicating their enthusiasm for lighter-than-air aircraft to the entire German population. Cavete! (Cavete!) was one of the most popular novels of the Wilhelm era, and earned Emil Sandt the nickname of "Germany's Jules Verne" - an honor the author modestly refused.(de) Nessun Saprà, Lexikon der deutschen Science Fiction & Fantasy 1870-1918, Utopica, 2005, pp. 225-226. At a time of widespread euphoria for aeronautics, only an acerbic satirist like the Austrian writer Karl Kraus dared to assert in 1908: "I date the end of the world from the beginnings of aeronautics."Nessun Saprà, op. cit., p. 169.
In 1909, Max Popp paid a vibrant tribute to Jules Verne in the first German monograph on the French novelist, Julius Verne und sein Werk. Des großen Romantikers Leben, Werke und Nachfolger (Jules Verne and his work. The life, works and successors of the great novelist), inspired by the contemporary work of Charles Lemire. In the second and third parts of his book, Max Popp offers what can be considered the first major synthesis of the genre of technical anticipation at the time.Roland Innerhofer emphasizes the important role played by Jules Verne's work in German anticipation literature. R. Innerhofer, Deutsche Science Fiction 1870-1914, Böhlau Wien, 1996, parts A (Jules Verne et la genèse d'un genre) and B (La Modernisation du roman d'aventures par Jules Verne). In the cometary wake of Jules Verne's Hector Servadac,The novel "Hector Servadac" by Jules Verne is directly evoked by one of the characters in the German novel, notably in chapter 39. Friedrich Wilhelm Mader offers German youth an interstellar voyage to distant Alpha Centauri with Wunderwelten (Wonderful Worlds), an educational and entertaining novel published in 1911.
A contemporary of Kurd Laßwitz, Paul Scheerbart (1863-1915) was a whimsical anti-militarist utopian who published futuristic novels in the tradition of Jonathan Swift's philosophical tales. The author gave free rein to a cosmic imagination that raises the question of the ontological link between the individual and the universe, without developing the purely technical elements typical of the genre. His two most famous works in this field are the collection of short stories Astrale Noveletten (Astral Novelettes), dated 1912, and the novel Lesabéndio. Ein Asteroïden-Roman (Lesabéndio. An Asteroid Novel), published in 1913. In it, Paul Scheerbart depicts lunar and extraterrestrial civilizations marveling at the luminous spectacle of a living universe.
The same year, 1913, saw the publication of Der Tunnel (The Tunnel) by writer Bernhard Kellermann (1879-1952). The novel was such a bestsellerThe novel was soon translated into French and made into a film starring Jean Gabin and Madeleine Renaud in 1933. that it was adapted twice for the cinema in the span of twenty years.The first film version of The Tunnel was a silent version shot in 1914/1915, and the second was a talking version shot in 1933. This "realist" novel vividly describes the economic and social consequences of building a gigantic rail tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean to link Europe and America.