Political Meals/Politische Mahlzeiten, a collection of articles dealing with politics and its festive or ceremonial meals, features articles in German and in English. The introduction appears in both languages in full, with sources cited at the end of the German-language version, but the articles appear only in German or in English. In this innovative approach to a bilingual edition each article begins with an abstract in the other language, German-language articles beginning with abstracts written in English, and vice versa.
This review, intended for Anglophone readers, will center on contributions in German which might be particularly appealing to them, so that they can narrow down their choices for translation.
Most articles have to do with twentieth- and twenty-first-century Western political culture. Diverging articles include Galit Hasan-Rokem’s article in English about political fruit in the Garden of Eden, a very real place in the minds of millions of people today. Hartmut Bleumer’s article in German deals with the symbolic impact in medieval times of social differentiation at meals. In addition, Waltraud Palz and Chiara Zamboni in “Nichtessen als politische Handlung” discuss the politics of refraining from eating, in the form of fasting, which may have reached a zenith in the Middle Ages but has become part of the political heritage of many protest movements of our times.
Political events involving eating have their own rules, rituals, and culture. This book stands at the intersection of ritual, communication (often intercultural communication), and culture. Meals taken on political occasions, at political gatherings, are “social facts” which display and reinforce community ties and allegiances (20-25). Politics are a given, but what are the specific activities and who are the actors? What do the rules of food, eating, politeness, and protocol have to do with it? Gardening, agriculture, and the politics of trash disposal also enter in (20).
People outside Germany may be unaware that since 2010 the German-language Voice of Russia radio broadcasts have featured a program entitled “Political Cuisine,” which has been entertaining with accounts of famous politicians’ almost equally famous meals. In many if not all countries present-day photographs feature political figures demonstrating their cooking skills. Ingesting nourishment, which became a form of performance art in the earliest days of human culture, remains so today.
Peter Heine’s article (183-196) on hospitality and politics in Islamic societies (“Gastlichkeit und Politik in islamischen Gesellschaften”) begins with the value of reputation in the earliest phases of Islamic history, a time when being known as a generous, imaginative host at table was an arm of the reputation-battles surrounding leadership in war. The good war leader is a good provider, a sort of father figure who remains close to his lieutenants by sharing meals and happy times with them (183). During the Abbasid period centering on Baghdad, complex rules and protocols governed all aspects of offering and accepting hospitality, with an eye always to Persian, rather than Arab, models. Court etiquette manuals spelled out the requirements for each role played in the ruler’s presence or on his behalf. Displays of riches, in the splendor of banquets or in lavish circumcision-ceremony or wedding gifts, bespoke power in all realms (183-196). The Ottoman Empire added an encyclopedic bureaucracy, lavish sculptures of gold and silver fruits, and precious foodstuffs donated to the public after the festivities were over.
Hartmut Bleumer contributes an article diagramming symbolic functions of meals in roughly contemporary medieval accounts (“Poetik und Diagramm: Ein Versuch zum Mahl in Mittelhochdeutscher Literatur”). The social function of meals shows up even in the languages—the very words companion in English and Kumpel in German lead to food. The Latin word compania means “with bread.” A companion is someone you break bread with, a linguistic reflection of social and political reality. Yet at banquets shared food has to find its way to each individual diner, and a distribution process manages this. Who serves whom and why—this becomes the issue. Meals are stages, therefore, for confrontation and for a display of power relationships by means of place, that is, by means of the diner’s location relative to the host and to other guests. Nearness to the lord or king is highly desirable. Nearness to a political foe may become intimidating or demonstrate the host’s displeasure. A number of Middle High German epics show revenge enacted at a meal or in the form of eating, including the Song of the Nibelungen and Konrad von Würzburg’s short narrative Herzemaere in which the deceived husband, the host, serves up his wife’s lover’s heart to her at a meal, in a much more than symbolic expression of revenge and retribution (102-103).
Regina Roemhild’s article, “Limitiertes Gastmahl: Überlegungen zur Ernährung und Gastronomie in den Grenzen der Migrationsgesellschaft” (263-271), highlights Germany’s role as a major receiver of refugees and asylum seekers, who then receive government help with food, medical care, housing, and other necessities, often for many years. The limited hospitality refers to the cumbersome process some migrants undergo in order to exchange government coupons for food and other necessities. While many communities no longer require this cumbersome process, the article reveals the shame involved in acknowledging, over and over, every time one makes a purchase, no matter how small, one’s total dependence on the generosity of the taxpayers and the government. To make matters worse, not every retail establishment accepts the chits, but the only way to find out one way or the other is to present one (264). The disgrace, felt by those who meet with refusal, adds to the psychological burden of migrant status, while adding to the tension felt at every meal won at the price of humiliation and worry.
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[Review length: 935 words • Review posted on September 22, 2015]