“Gott in Anmuth”

The oeuvre of German poet and philosopher Friedrich Hölderlin (17701843) has been an important point of reference in philosophical and cultural debates of the 20th and 21st century, referenced in various contexts and at times controversially. In these discussions, the question of how Hölderlin deals with the concept of God plays an important role even in secular contexts and crossing disciplinary boundaries (theology, philosophy, literary studies). Indeed, the question of God (Gottesfrage) is a central motif in Hölderlins entire poetic and philosophical oeuvre. The research project, situated at the intersection of religion and aesthetics, pursues this question on the basis of Hölderlins Homburger Folioheft, a collection of fragmentary texts written between 1801 and 1806 that are much debated in current research. The volume contains numerous drafts, fragments, notations and blank pages. Its textual form comprises clean copies, overlapping stages and interleaved text segments; the Folioheft shows sometimes a tendency to dissolve into an unrecognizable textual form. The project starts with the observation that the (concept of) God can be found on almost every page of the volume. God or the divine appears remarkably often whenever Hölderlin makes significant changes to the text changes that, for Johann Kreuzer, indicate a process of Sprachfindung. The project elaborates on the thesis that this process of searching a language (Sprachfindung) is closely connected to dealing with the notion of God. The project involves a close reading of the text, paying particular attention to transitions, ruptures and gaps, as well as to the process of re-elaboration and the search for new linguistic expressions. Rather than identifying the ultimate version amid various stages and thereby establishing a final text, the project treats the text as it stands as an open work of art (Umberto Eco). Thus understood, the unfinished Homburger Folioheft calls for the readers active cooperation. Such readings mean oscillating between different stages and thereby allowing new constellations of textual elements to evolve that initially seem unconnected. This interactive and open reception process characterises what we call an aesthetic approach to the volume. The fact that the notion of God is at the core of the vast changes that Hölderlin made over the years in the Homburger Folioheft and that the text, understood as an open work of art, depends on the readers cooperation can be a provocative stimulus for theology. Theology is challenged to render the name of God in new ways, i.e., as the open that evades direct linguistic representation and undermines any attempt to grasp its meaning directly from what the text expresses. This project regards the reader of the HF as part of a process of concealing and revealing the name of God; interestingly this corresponds to the unfolding nature of the name of God as it is portrayed in the biblical narratives.

Friedrich Hölderlin (1770-1843) was one of the most important German-speaking poets. Since the beginning of the 20th century, his work has been widely received in poetry and philosophy. The question of God plays a major role in this - even in contexts that have little to do with religion. Located at the intersection of theology, philosophy of religion, and aesthetics the present project examined the question of God as it surfaces in Hölderlin's Homburger Folioheft [HF], on which the poet presumably worked between 1801 and 1806. The HF is a handwritten collection resulting from many revisions, which contains important poems as well as numerous drafts, fragments, notes and blank pages. It does not present a text that can be read through in a conventional sense, but contains passages with a wealth of revisions, overlapping layers of text and interlaced text segments that do not reveal a final version. Frequently, the poet added new layers to existing text passages without deleting the previous ones. On almost every page, Hölderlin talks about God or the divine. The innovative character of the project consists in the combination of two premises: On the one hand, it took its thematic starting point from the ever-changing thematization of the divine in the HF. On the other hand, it methodologically treated the different layers of the text as equal and did not consider earlier versions of individual text passages to have been overcome by later ones. Thus, one can no longer speak of a final form of the text, but of a dynamic of change. In several publications in various languages, the project exemplified that the dynamism of the text through revision is often found precisely where the divine is addressed. There, "God" does not appear just as one theme among others, but as intimately connected with the text's transformation. The importance of the question of God is thus shown in the transitions and in the oscillation between the layers or, in short, in the polyphony of the text which is not unambiguous. This attempt to perceive the text's polyphony can be described as an aesthetic approach. It generates new insights into how the poetic process of creating and revising the text is kept in motion by the question of God. To develop such a perspective, regular circles with a heterogeneous group of participants proved to be fruitful. The participants' various backgrounds (philosophy, theology, German studies, law etc.) helped to render the polyphony inherent in the text while protecting it from tendencies of discovering and fixing an ultimate meaning. Concluding the project with an international workshop showed the desideratum of continuing the project and expanding it by combining the question of God with that of nature.