Allan, Sean. (2009) 'Die rache der barbaren sei dir fern!' : myth, identity, and the encounter with the colonial other in Heinrich von Kleist's Die Hermannsschlacht. Publications of the English Goethe Society, Vol.78 (No.1-2). pp. 47-59. ISSN 09593683

Abstract

When viewed through the ideological prism of the Roman/French imperial forces, the indigenous German population in Kleist's Die Hermannsschlacht is regarded as a primitive Other essentially in awe of the dominant power's apparent 'sophistication'. But as the play shows, it is precisely the failure of the latter to acknowledge the operations of self-interest that lie concealed within these discursive systems of its own making that constitutes a fatal weakness and leads, in time, to their eventual demise. By including the execution of Aristan — the only character besides Hermann to embrace a genuinely radical concept of freedom — Kleist invites the reader/spectator to take a critical view of the central protagonist.

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