The road to utopia can veer off into hell. That seems to be the lesson that Uwe Timm seeks to impart in his 2017 novel Ikarien. In the spring of 1945, Michael Hansen, a young German-American officer of the US Army is sent to Munich to gather information on the medical researcher Alfred Ploetz – the father of Nazi Rassenhygiene ("racial hygiene"), whose theories became the foundation for Hitler's euthanasia program. The historical Ploetz is certainly of more than passing interest for Uwe Timm, since Ploetz was the grandfather of Timm's wife, the translator Dagmar Ploetz. In Munich young Hansen interviews Ploetz's lifelong friend Karl Wagner – a committed socialist who did a stint in the Dachau concentration camp and then survived the rest of the war by hiding out in the basement of a rare bookstore. The novel consists of alternating chapters of Wagner's lengthy reminiscences of his friend Ploetz and Hansen's diaries of his sexual escapades in the ruins of bombed out Munich.
The title Ikarien refers to the French philosopher Étienne Cabet,who provided a blueprint for a utopian society based on Marxist ideas in his 1840 book Voyage to Icaria. The book captured the imagination of many young intellectuals throughout Europe, including a circle of students in Germany led by the charismatic Alfred Ploetz. Cabet didn't just dream of an egalitarian society, he actually established Icarian communities in Texas, Iowa and Missouri. Ploetz and Wagner embarked on their own "voyage to Icaria" to see how these egalitarian communities were actually functioning. It is this fateful trip to America that is at the center of Timm's Ikarien.
Needless to say, the young idealists are bitterly disappointed by what they see in Iowa. The community is dysfunctional – in part because the members are from all parts of Europe and are forced to communicate in English, which only a few have mastered. It also quickly becomes apparent that some members are more "equal" than others. Ploetz and Wagner are eventually expelled from the community for advocating for equal rights for the women. For Ploetz, the failure of Icaria was due to the racial disparities of the members. Equality can only be achieved through nurturing a higher level of racial conformity – and the Nordic race provides the foundation for achieving a cohesive, utopian society on a large scale:
"Es kann keine Gleichheit geben, wo die Ungleichheit so groß ist. (…) Die Gleichheit kann nur durch eine allgemeine Höherentwicklung erreicht werden (…): die Aufzucht eines starken, gesunden, vor allem auch schönen Geschlechts(…). Es muss eine biologische Revolution geben, sie muss die soziale ergänzen!!!"
Of course, the flip side of nurturing desirable racial traits is the suppression – and then "elimination" of undesirable traits. This is the slippery slope that Wagner immediately comprehends and eventually results in the rupture of his friendship with Ploetz. For Wagner, a community organized solely according to rational principles eventually devolves into barbarism. He visits the Amana colonies in Iowa – communities established by German Pietists. And, although an atheist himself, he finds much to admire:
"Mein Interesse richtete sich auf ebendiesen Aspekt des Spirituellen, das bei den Amanen etwas Magisches {…} hat. Erstaunlich ist jedenfalls, dass durchaus etwas Vernünftiges entstehen konnte, während in der ganz auf Vernunft gegründeten, dem Irrationalen keinen Platz lassende Kommune der Ikarier das Vernünftige zerstört wurde. Ihnen fehlte auf eine eigentümliche Weise die Kohäsion. Das Glückversprechen der Harmonie ist nicht dem Verstande allein abzuringen, die Seele gehört dazu …"
Uwe Timm can be a terrific storyteller: I placed his novelle Die Entdeckung der Currywurst in my list of the Ten Greatest German Novellas. Unfortunately, the narrative momentum in Ikarien all too often gets derailed by long historical digressions – such as Wagner's recollections of the 1918 Revolution in Bavaria. Also, Timm missed the opportunity to examine how the "science" of eugenics originated in the United States. Eugenics was studied and promoted at all the leading American universities – including Harvard. One of America’s leading eugenicists, Madison Grant, received a letter thanking him for writing his book “The Passing of a Great Race,” which the letter’s author called his “Bible.” The compliment came from Adolf Hitler.
See also my reviews of Die Entdeckung der Currywurst and Halbschatten.
