Colloquia Germanica – Heft 1

«YOU ARE FROZEN»: Andreas Ammer
and FM Einheit’s Radio Play Frost
KATHARINA GERSTENBERGER
UNIVERSITY OF UTAH
In December of 2011, the world commemorated the 100th anniversary of the
Norwegian Roald Amundsen’s discovery of the South Pole; the centennial of
the arrival of Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated expedition took place on January
17, 1912. In celebration of the dual discovery tours providers offered trips to
the South Pole with the option to ski at least part of the routes taken by the two
explorers, or, for those who really wanted to get a feel for the original
experience, heavy sleds for pulling across the ice were provided.1 The polar
regions to this day entice us with the extreme challenges they pose, with the
human dramas that have unfolded there, and with their stark beauty. In
addition to such perceptions of individual human interface with these
landscapes, the polar regions also figure prominently as harbingers of
impending ecological disaster. In the summer of 2008, for instance, both
the North-East and the North-West Passage, the routes along the Northern
edges of the Eurasian and the American continents, were free from ice for the
first time in recorded history. The disappearing ice has acquired iconographic
status in the debates about the impact of collective human activity on the
ecosystem and has perhaps been captured most prominently in a photograph
of a polar bear perched on a precariously small piece of floating ice.2 In either
case, the polar regions engage the fantasies and the fears of a dramatic and
potentially lethal struggle between humans and the planet’s most extreme
environments.
Just how much the ice incites our imagination is evident also in the literary
production since and even before the Romantic era. Imagined either as «icy
hell» or as «uninhabitable paradise,» as the editors of the recent anthology
Artic Discourses observe about the Arctic (x), the globe’s ice caps are depicted
in genres ranging from biography to crime fiction, addressing concerns from
the human motivation for ultimate exploration to environmental issues,
offering critiques of imperial expansion and hierarchies of gender, while
continuing to probe fantasies of life under extreme circumstances, to name just
a few.3 Ice and frozenness, furthermore, are versatile tropes that can be applied
to a range of contexts from political circumstances to psychological states of
being. «Heat and cold probably provide the oldest metaphors for emotion
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that exist,» Francis Spufford remarked pertinently in his study about the
importance of the literary imagination for the exploration of the polar regions
(13).
This essay attempts an interpretation of a text that engages with the literary
tradition of polar discovery in a complex and pointedly irreverent fashion:
written by Andreas Ammer with music by FM Einheit, the radio play Frost
79°40' (1998) is an acoustic version of Robert Falcon Scott’s voyage to the
South Pole and his subsequent death in the ice. Ammer’s piece, even though it
relies to a large part on quotations from Scott’s original diaries, strips the story
of its established meanings, in particular the common depiction of Robert
Scott as a tragic hero. At the same time, Ammer plays with the topoi of
coldness and frozenness in ways that make clear that he is not interested in
their metaphorical meanings but, rather, in the artistic possibilities they open
up. The following discussion of Frost analyzes the work in the context of the
traditions within and against which Ammer positions his work, arguing that
the iconoclastic impulse is ultimately more important than the establishment
of a stable counter reading. Specifically, two frames of reference are important
here: The melancholic travels into the ice that were so numerous in the
literature of the 1980s; and the many existing versions, literary as well as in
other media, of Robert Falcon Scott’s journey to the South Pole.
In the 1980s, literary expeditions into the ice enjoyed a remarkable
popularity with readers and writers, who often used such journeys as
metaphors for political and psychological states-of-being they perceived
as frozen.4 The best-known example is perhaps Christoph Ransmayr’s 1984
Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis, a complex novel that blends the
story of the 1872 Austro-Hungarian expedition aimed at finding the
Northeast Passage with a fatal (and fictitious) contemporary journey.5
The list also includes W.G Sebald’s «Und blieb ich am äußersten Meer,»
the middle section of his 1988 prose poem Nach der Natur, which is based on a
1740 journey from the Russian peninsula Kamchatka to Alaska undertaken
by Georg Wilhelm Steller, a German explorer and biologist, under the
leadership of Vitus Bering.6 This historic expedition resulted in the destruction of nature and indigenous populations, vividly exemplified in Sebald’s
poem by Steller’s sea cow, a manatee species named after the explorer and
hunted to extinction within a few years after the expedition’s arrival. One of
the earliest examples of these literary expeditions is Guntram Vesper’s 1980
Nordwestpassage, a cycle of poems about failed artic expeditions that describe
a world in which people do not live in harmony with nature or one another
and whose goals are either elusive or misguided. Vesper’s explorers die in the
ice, commit ethical violations, or return deeply disillusioned. In these texts of
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the 1980s, the willingness to take risks and the desire to gather new knowledge
about the world do not lead to extraordinary achievement but end in physical,
ecological as well as moral catastrophes that become symptomatic for the
failures of Western history in general and German history in particular. The
arctic regions, in the words of Friedhelm Marx, provided writers disillusioned
by the failed student movement and skeptical of the possibility of enlightened
progress with the perfect setting to illustrate the «Sinnlosigkeit eines Fortschritts» («Leben im Eis» 137).7
Working in the 1990s, Andreas Ammer does not share this melancholy view
of the world. He charts, instead, new narrative paths by introducing humor
and irony, by focusing on the material rather than the psychological aspects of
travels into the ice, and by presenting the story in a medium that leaves behind
what Bettine Menke has called the «Polargebiete der Bibliothek.»8 In her
comprehensive article about the literary tradition of polar exploration, Menke
argues that the lure of the uncharted territories of the polar regions is inspired
by a long series of texts that depict the very emptiness the traveler expects to
encounter. This «Paradoxie» (545), in Menke’s words, can be found in the
texts themselves as they simultaneously invoke the prohibition of boundary
transgression and motivate exploration (564). The white spots on the map that
the explorers aspire to fill in are always already described in literature, turning
the polar regions into a metapoetic metaphor for the texts themselves. With its
collage of voices and sounds, Ammer’s Frost interrupts the textual production
of the polar imagination and its theme of uncharted emptiness, opening up
new ways of tapping the material’s artistic potential.
Robert Falcon Scott and his journey have been repeatedly portrayed in
fictional as well as non-fictional texts which often cast the explorer in the role
of tragic hero whose fate merited more attention than that of Roald Amundsen
who was the first to reach the South Pole. Reasons given for this public
resonance include Scott’s arrival as the second in a contest about being first,
but also the fact that Scott recorded his voyage and, ultimately, his dying in a
document intended for public consumption. Scott’s extensive diary of his
journey concludes with a «Message to the Public» that was broadcast around
the world immediately after the bodies of the expedition leader and his two
remaining companions had been found in November of 1912, about nine
months after their deaths. This document, according to Max Jones, editor of a
recent edition of Scott’s diaries, «laid the foundation of the legend of Scott of
the Antarctic» (xxxi). In his «Message,» Scott insisted that not his organization
was at fault but, rather, that the «misfortune in all risks which had to be
undertaken» (421) led to the expedition’s disastrous end. He appeals to
English nationalism when he believes that his journey has shown that
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«Englishmen can [. . .] meet death with as great a fortitude as ever in the past»
(422). Scott’s widow and his young son, for whose support after his death
Scott pleads in the document’s last sentence, became instant celebrities. The
reach of modern mass media added greatly to the public’s reception of the
story of Scott as a tragic hero who died in the service to his fatherland, ever
mindful of his family. The first edition of Scott’s diary came out in 1913 to
great critical acclaim. The first biography was published in 1929.9
The notion of Robert Scott as a tragic hero shapes the reception of his story
well into the recent past. In a catalogue accompanying a 1991 exhibition on
«Kunsteis, Kälte und Kultur,» Heidi Caroline Ebertshäuser writes that
«[Scott’s] Mut und seine aufrechte Haltung angesichts des Todes wie
auch die Treue seiner Gefährten» bestows on his «Scheitern tragische,
fast antikische Ausmaße» (42). The British journalist Diana Preston used
a quote from Scott’s surviving team member Apsley Cherry-Garrard, himself
the author of a book on Scott, as the title of her 1997 biography of Robert
Scott. Preston’s A First Rate Tragedy is a work inspired by the question why
Scott «became and remained a far greater hero than if he had survived» (2).
Within the German tradition, Stefan Zweig’s beautifully rendered 1927
novella «Der Kampf um den Südpol,» one of five stories included in the
first version of his Sternstunden der Menschheit, is perhaps still the bestknown literary re-telling of the explorer’s fate. In line with contemporaneous
views, Zweig celebrates Scott as an unassuming captain in the British Navy
whose steadfast commitment to serving his fatherland even in the face of
defeat turned him into a tragic hero in the Aristotelian sense. Zweig’s novella
draws on the principle of peripetie, sudden change of luck, when he subtitled
his piece «Capitan Scott, 90 degrees longitude, January 16, 1912,» referring to
the day on which Scott and his group realized that the Norwegian Roald
Amundsen and his team had beaten them to the Pole. Even more importantly,
Zweig’s focus on the loser of the race to the South Pole privileges intention and
integrity over the final outcome, following the Aristotelian notion that the
hero is a character whose plight is the result of an unfavorable course of events
rather than of a personal fault or character flaw.10 At the end of Zweig’s
novella, Scott and his men rise from the dead as they become visible once more
in the photographs left behind in their cameras. The scene anticipates Roland
Barthes’s observation that «photography has something to do with resurrection» (82). Photography, for Barthes, documents «reality in a past state» (82)
and proves that someone was «there» (82). This is precisely the kind of
confirmation that pictures such as the ones Scott and his party took at the
South Pole aim to provide. In his conclusion Zweig once more invokes the
Aristotelian concept of tragedy when he interprets Scott’s story as the result of
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an «unbesiegbare Übermacht des Schicksals» (240). With its emphasis on male
friendship, the willingness to endure hardship, and unfailing loyalty to the
nation, Zweig’s novella celebrates a pre-War Europe in which individual
heroism has not yet been rendered obsolete by the mass carnage of World War
I. With its detailed descriptions of the technology available to the explorers
and their use of modern media, Zweig’s novella, which describes Scott as a
«Fanatiker der Sachlichkeit» (225), also shares characteristics of Neue
Sachlichkeit with its emphasis on task-oriented characters and unembellished
prose composed to convey facts.11
Written at about the same time as Stefan Zweig’s «Kampf um den Südpol,»
Reinhard Goering’s drama «Die Südpolexpedition des Kapitän Scott» (1929)
also emphasizes physical hardship and, even more importantly, the psychological suffering Scott and his men had to endure as a consequence of their
failure to be the first to reach the South Pole.12 Born in 1887, Goering made a
name for himself with his expressionist drama «Seeschlacht» (1917), a piece
that references the Skagerrak battle of 1916 between the German and the
British fleet. «Die Südpolexpedition,» for which Goering was awarded the
Kleist-Preis, borrows from Greek tragedy and includes a chorus that relates
the facts of and offers commentary on Scott’s voyage. The drama first shows
Scott and his companions on January 16, 1912, the day they spot Amundsen’s
tent at the Pole. As in Zweig’s novella, «fate» plays a significant role, guiding
not only Scott’s but Amundsen’s life as well. Roald Amundsen, whose team,
according to the chorus, let its «Schlitten von Hunden ziehen,/Und oft noch
sich selbst» and was «vortrefflich ausgerüstet» (Goering 523), wins the race
with the help of superior technology and planning but at the cost of being a
true hero. An astrologer reads Amundsen’s fate written in the stars: «Schuldig
wirst du befunden werden,/An manches Menschen Tod» (558). Privileging
Scott’s heroism over Amundsen’s seemingly easy and presumably guilty
success, the drama presents the struggle between the two explorers as
symptomatic of European history. The comment of the chorus doubles
as a critique of civilization: «O Europa! So mordet dir den Zweiten der Erste/
Und nur die eine Frage bleibt: wer tötet den?» (525). Goering’s drama links the
rivalry over the South Pole to Europe’s history of wars among peoples who
share the same cultural heritage.13 Both Zweig’s and Goering’s versions of
Scott’s expedition were written during the late Weimar Republic and under
the influence of Neue Sachlichkeit, a literary style whose proponents rejected
the pathos of expressionism and argued instead for the need to create
characters that somehow stood up to the ardors of modern life.14 Although
Helmut Lethen’s conclusions about the period and the figure of the «kalte
persona,» whose characteristics include «Illusionslosigkeit» (65) but also the
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resolve to persevere before the «‹Gletschern› der Zivilisation» (43), have come
under scrutiny recently, the way both Zweig’s and Goering’s texts script
Scott’s stoic acceptance of his fate confirms the importance of emotional
detachedness for the literature of the late Weimar Republic, making Scott a
«cold hero» in more than one sense of the word.15
Andreas Ammer’s radio play Frost, in a significant departure from this
tradition, eliminates the metaphorical dimensions of the dispassionate hero
and instead turns its attention to the fact that Robert Scott literarily froze to
death. Ammer, born in Munich in 1960, is a journalist and artist who has made
a name for himself with his innovative and often provocative radio plays.
Before entering into the field of TV and radio work, he studied German
literature, philosophy and the history of science at the University of Munich,
where he also taught for a brief period of time. Among his best-known works
are Radio Inferno (1993), his radio adaptation of Dante’s Divine Comedy;
Deutsche Krieger (1995), a radio play that features and distorts original
soundtracks of speeches and utterances by Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolf Hitler, and
Ulrike Meinhof; and Crashing Aeroplanes (2001), which includes original
radio coverage of the Hindenburg explosion in Lakehurst, NJ, in 1937 and
incorporates voice recordings from the cockpits of actual planes shortly
before they crashed. Several of Ammer’s radio plays, including Crashing
Aeroplanes and also Frost, were created in cooperation with the musician and
composer FM Einheit, a former member of the music group Einstürzende
Neubauten.16 Ammer has won awards for several of his radio plays, including
the Hörspielpreis der Kriegsblinden for Crashing Aeroplanes and Apocalypse
Live, which was also awarded the 1995 «Special Prize for Fiction» in the Prix
Italia competition. «Ammer and F. M. Einheit,» according to radio play
expert Elke Huwiler, «are the most influential and successful German radio
drama artists of the last decade» («Engaging the Ear,» 144, endnote 6).
Virtually all critics who comment on Ammer’s radio plays point to the
innovative combination of music and words in his work, with some suggesting that Ammer’s focus on «musikalische Semantik» makes secondary the
significance of words (Schmedes 47). My analysis of Frost suggests that text,
much of which consists of quotations from original documents, remains
important but that meaning is rendered ambiguous by the musical performance and by Ammer’s way of manipulating wording and context, a
technique Knut Hickethier has aptly described as «wiedererkennende(s)
Zitieren» (142). Unlike the experimental radio plays of, for instance, Peter
Handke, which contest the semantic meaning of words, Ammer alters
contents through the modification of original language, the combination
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of words and music, the creation of new contexts, as well as the performance as
such.17
Frost was performed live at the city theater in Oberhausen on August 28,
1998 and broadcast simultaneously by the Westdeutscher Rundfunk.18
Traditional radio plays rely largely on the spoken word for meaning and
use sound effects to make up for the missing visual element. A piece like Frost,
however, which the recipient can comprehend with or without the stage
performance, displays allegiance to as well as independence of the radio
through its innovative use of acoustic and visual media. The ad for the CD
describes Frost as «Das letzte Abenteuer der Menschheit/akustisches Roadmovie. Irgendwann am Anfang des Jahrhunderts,» stripping Scott’s journey
of its tragic aspects by stressing the collective fascination with discovery over
individual achievement and by highlighting its connection to media and
entertainment.19 Given the media attention and the public interest in Scott’s
fate, the ad expresses an irreverent yet entirely fitting take on the story.
Frost consists of 26 individual segments, which can be subdivided into the
four themes of preparation, journey, arrival at the Pole, and death during the
return trip. Preserving the story’s chronology, the text largely follows Scott’s
diary, which it quotes selectively and whose wording it modifies at times.20
The title, which shifts attention away from the person or the journey to the
physical conditions encountered by the expedition, may well be a reference
and homage to Stefan Zweig, who uses the word «Frost» repeatedly in his
novella to describe one of Scott’s main adversaries. The text is performed by
three speakers: Scott, spoken by the East German actor Günter Rügen; «She,»
a commentator and female counterpart to Scott and enacted by the Danish
singer Gry Bagøien; and a «Scientist» who provides factual information on
topics like «whiteout» or the medical specifics on freezing to death and is
played by theater actor Yorck Dippe. The generic designations of the two
characters vis-à-vis Scott suggest that gender politics and professional
expertise – or lack thereof – play a role in Scott’s story and ultimate demise.21
Also included are two sections with historical recordings in which the
Norwegian explorer and expert skier Tryggve Gran recalls how he and
his team members found the bodies of Scott and his companions. The sections
performed by the character Scott are rendered in spoken German translation.
«She» speaks and sings almost entirely in English. Stage directions for the
Scientist, who speaks in German, instruct him to present his lines like a master
of ceremonies. Music and sounds, which are performed on electronic
instruments by FM Einheit together with the Finnish group Pan Sonic,
are an integral part of the production, creating meanings and associations that
go well beyond the historical events described in the play and referenced in the
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words. The music, with recurring motifs like «IceMusic [sic],» «Music for
Things,» «WanderMusic [sic],» and «DeathMusic [sic],» creates cohesion and
interconnections beyond the chronology of the textual narrative. The
combination of words and acoustics allows, in the words of Elke Huwiler,
«a story to unfold indirectly instead of telling it in a baldly linguistic manner»
(«Engaging the Ear» 136). In the case of Frost, the music possesses artistic
significance of its own, underscoring and supporting Ammer’s intention of
breaking with previous interpretations and versions of a legendary narrative.
Radio plays are by definition a hybrid genre that combines word and sound,
often in experimental fashion. Its connection to literature on one hand and
music and sound effects on the other poses challenges to the scholarly
expertise that is often limited to one of those areas and perhaps accounts for its
somewhat neglected status as a research focus. Historically, the genre is
associated with the radio’s task of reporting «live» on unfolding events. From
early on it has been placed in the service of cultural and political projects.
Walter Benjamin’s broadcasts for children are an example, as are Bert Brecht’s
attempts at overcoming the one-directional character of radio and to turn it
into a medium of communication. Importantly, from the very beginning the
genre was viewed as closely linked to literature, in effect the radio’s way of
adapting literary texts. The combination of social and political criticism with
literary aesthetics reached its peak in the 1950s and 1960s, arguably the period
during which the radio play in Germany enjoyed its highest public significance. To this day the form is most often associated with the critical content
that was central to the literary radio plays of the post-War period.22 A
pertinent example in this context is Wolfgang Weyrauch’s version of Robert
Scott’s expedition to the South Pole, his radio play Das grüne Zelt, first aired
by Bayrischer Rundfunk in 1957 and published together with his anti-atomic
testing piece Die Japanischen Fischer in 1963. Dying in his tent, Weyrauch’s
Scott conjures up his dead companions who then proceed to accuse him of
having been a poorly prepared leader. A dialogue between Scott and
Amundsen, in which the latter suggests that a hero is someone who survives
so that others can live (29), hints at the play’s message. Rattling tin cans and
sounds mimicking wind reinforce the implications of the spoken words but
do not add layers of meaning. An instance of the postwar engagement with the
Nazi period, Das grüne Zelt presents us with a leader who must question his
own actions in the face of death.
Andreas Ammer and FM Einheit’s Frost retains elements of social criticism
but with his use of acoustics and, in the stage version, visuals means that Frost
goes well beyond the scope of the literary radio drama of the 1950s and 1960s.
Frost and pieces like it, such as Heiner Goebbels’s Schwarz auf Weiß (1997)
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and Die Wiederholung (1997), begin to appear in the 1990s and are typically
categorized as «Neue Hörspiele»; they are routinely performed live on stage
and broadcast simultaneously. Media scholar and journalist Götz Schmedes
has emphasized the importance of what he terms the «Interaktivität» (43)
between the radio play and the theater, arguing that both forms influence one
another but retain autonomy at the same time. Ammer himself has noted that
the task today is to write radio plays «die aus dem Medium heraus ihren Platz
finden und vielleicht auch auf der Bühne funktionieren können, ein Spektakel
sind» (qtd. in Schmedes 45). The term «Spektakel» suggests that linear
narration and the meaning it produces is dissolved in favor of the visual
elements and the act of seeing absent from a conventional radio play and draws
attention to the importance of performance and the imperative to entertain the
audience. At another occasion Ammer notes that «Kultur besteht daraus, die
Geschichten immer wieder zeitgemäß zu erzählen. In den Opern wurden
immer schon dieselben zwanzig Geschichten neu erzählt. Das machen wir
auch. Da sind wir ein Teil des Ganzen» (Neuhauser 117). Rather than breaking
with tradition Ammer lays claim to participation, insisting that culture must
constantly renew itself and develop ways of presenting its material for the
contemporary period.
Frost differs from traditional literary voyages into the ice in multiple ways.
The most obvious departure is the insertion of a female voice into a male story
of conquest. Another difference manifests itself in Ammer’s and Einheit’s way
of blending words and sounds into a new way of telling the story: «She» is the
only voice that sings as well as speaks; oscillating between speech and song,
her voice hints at the intent to move beyond established conventions.23 Her
function in the text is to offer commentary and to create an interpretative
framework for Scott’s journey that diverges from previous versions of his
story. «She» opens the play with an adapted quotation from the very end of
Scott’s diary, his «Message to the Public:» «These rough notes/And your dead
bodies/Must tell the tale» (iii).24 The change from the original first person to
the third is an exemple of the liberties Ammer tends to take with citations and
underscores the fact that Scott’s story has long ceased to be his own. Used as an
opening line, the passage also introduces the play’s focus on the body as an
element already present in Scott’s original story. The mention of the explorers’
deaths at the play’s beginning makes clear that this will not be a story about
heroic struggle but one that takes the final outcome as its point of departure.
Immediately following «She’s» lead-in comes a technical explanation of
«Whiteout,» the loss of orientation in the all-white environment of the Pole.
Presented by the Scientist with clinical precision, the passage is a sarcastic
comment on polar travel but also a parody on scientific discourse itself.
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Stefan Zweig, in the opening sections of «Kampf um den Südpol,» compares the
globe to an abused female body that attempts, in vain, to protect its remaining
immaculate spots, the poles, against the «Gierigen» (223), deploying eternal
winter and «Frost» as guardians. Frost picks up on this sexualized imagery in its
second section titled «Two Letters & A Telegram,» in which Scott, speaking
about himself in the third person, proclaims in a confident voice: «Das ganze
Land ist eine Frau/und in deren Mitte/– meine Damen und Herren –/muß er die
Fahne seines Königs stecken. Als erster. JUS PRIMAE NOCTIS» (iv).
Invoking a tradition of male sexual privilege in a class society, Ammer’s
parody takes aim at the «gendered model of natural conquest» Susanne Zantop
and others have shown to be at work in the colonial enterprise.25 The scene is
accompanied by low-intensity electronic sound in the background that perhaps
mimics blowing wind. A little later the narrative shifts to the first person: «Da
steh ich, frauenloser Scott,/im Anorak. Friere und bin königstreu/Ich werde
Ponys schlachten/und laufen und schreiben/und laufen und Held sein,/bis der
letzte Arm abfriert» (v).26 Clearly not from the original diaries or letters, the
sentence anticipates some of the most gruesome aspects of the story, including
the slaughter of the ponies that accompanied the team, turning Scott into a
dispassionate observer who comments on his own fate from a subject position
only possible in the realm of fiction. The pronouncement strips the narrative of
its heroic aspects, instead highlighting the brutality as well as the irrationality of
the undertaking and adding an element of irony. In response, «She» reads the
famous telegram in which Amundsen announces his departure for the South
Pole. The female voice draws attention to the rivalry between two men without
taking anyone’s side.
Throughout the play, «She» and Scott engage in a dialogue of sorts even if
they do not speak to one another directly. Rather, «She’s» passages add
commentary and different perspectives. For instance, Frost contains two
segments titled «Litanei der Dinge,» which list items placed in one of several
storage depots the members of the expedition created along their route in
preparation for the journey to the Pole. In the first instance, Scott recites the list
of items, culled from his original diaries but rendered in German –«8 Wochen
Tee Extra/6 Wochen Extra Butter/7 Wochen Vollkornkekse.» In its repetition,
«She» recounts a very similar but not completely identical list, this time in
English–«8 weeks’ tea/6 week’s full biscuit/8 1/2 gallons oil.» What seems
impeccably precise in the first version becomes more arbitrary and less reliable
in the second. Both scenes are accompanied by «Music for Things,» a rhythmic
and somewhat choppy sequence of electronic sounds that emphasizes the
element of repetition. In the second iteration, which comes during the
expedition’s return trip, Scott asserts that «jede Einzelheit der Planung unserer
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Vorräte und Lager [. . .] erwies sich als perfekt.» A quotation from Scott’s
«Message to the Public,» the original passage places responsibility for the
expedition’s demise with unforeseeable human weakness and adverse weather
rather than poor planning. In Frost, the statement takes on an ironic effect not
initially intended (Scott 421). «She» comments: «You-are-frozen,» taking
literally a line from Madonna’s 1998 pop song «Frozen» about a lover’s
emotional unresponsiveness. The rhythmic recitation hints at the quasireligious power of the things with which Scott seeks to triumph over the
harsh environment of the South Pole. The repetition in German and in English
privileges linguistic play over actual meaning. The same musical theme
accompanies a scene called «Men without Women,» which lists the names
and occupations of all men who participated in the expedition and states
whether or not they survived. While the gendered discourse about virgin
territories is metaphorical, the section title takes the absence of women at face
value. Presented by «She» in a fast and matter-of-fact fashion, music and words
together call into question the difference between the expedition’s human
participants and the items placed in the depots for their survival. Women’s
traditional exclusion from male enterprises like polar exploration in Ammer’s
version becomes part of his critique of traditional masculinity and the selfreification to which Scott and his team members succumb.
Ammer’s technique of «wiedererkennendes Zitieren» (Hickethier 142), a
stylistic device that renders strange familiar phrases, also applies to his use of
Lawrence Oates’s famous line «I am going outside – and may be some time,»
recorded in Robert Scott’s diary has having been spoken by Oates as he left
their tent with the intention of freezing to death. Sung several times by «She,»
the melodious repetition becomes an antidote of sorts to the grimness of the
severely incapacitated Oates’s decision to die rather than be a burden to the
other team members.27 Similarly, in a section titled «Choral über das Nichts,»
all of whose lines are from the original diary, «She» and Scott recite Scott’s
famous observation about the Pole that «[t]here is very little that is different
from the awful monotony of [past] days» (xx).28 «She» sings in English, Scott
speaks in German. Turned into a «chorale,» i. e. a comparatively simple piece
of church music meant to be sung by the entire congregation, the deadly
conditions at the Pole as described in Scott’s diary become material for a lyrical
exchange and even hope of redemption.
The perhaps most important element of critique that runs through the
entire radio drama is the refusal to deploy coldness and freezing as metaphors
for emotional or political states of being. Frost thus can be read to inhabit a
counter position to the voyages into the ice of the 1980s and the frozen
melancholia they purport to represent. The Scientist is an example of this anti-
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Katharina Gerstenberger
metaphorical stance when he expounds on the physical implications of
extreme temperatures: «Gegen Unterkühlung hilft/– neben äußerem Kälteschutz durch Kleidung –/kräftige Bewegung./Sinkt die Rektaltemperatur
unter 22 Grad tritt Kältetod ein.» Spoken quickly and without compassion in
a section titled «The Killing Effect,» the lines explain in medical terms how
Scott and his men died without inviting the listener to identify with the
explorers’ suffering. The music, providing a background to the human voice,
consists of individual sounds whose increasing volume adds dramatic
emphasis to a scene otherwise devoid of emotional expression. Played on
electronic instruments as well as on «IceBlocks» (ii), according to the stage
directions, the music foregrounds the acoustic representation of coldness
rather than Scott’s unsuccessful struggle against it.
In its focus on coldness as an artistic theme, Frost adapts two existing pieces of
music which offer variations on the topic: «Frost Scene» from Henry Purcell’s
1691 «semi-opera» King Arthur and Madonna’s song «Frozen» from 1998, the
year Frost appeared.29 The pieces in Henry Purcell’s «Frost Scene,» in which
Cupid warms a «Chorus of Cold People» with his love, are played and sung in a
way that emulates shivering. The singers perform repeated notes in a slurred
staccato or tremolo fashion, exhaling several times while holding one tone
(Sawkins 257). Madonna’s «Frozen,» by contrast, is a pop song that appeals to
the beloved to open his heart. In this case, the music does not try to emulate
coldness or shivering but the lyrics are such that they can be applied to Scott as
well: «You're so consumed with how much you get,» reads one line, perhaps
recognizing that unbridled ambition has the potential to destroy love as well as
life. Frost borrows freely and creatively from different cultural traditions, often
with little regard for the original context or purpose. Furthermore, the
reception and enjoyment of these intertextual and intermedial references
does not ultimately depend on the audience’s ability to decipher them.
The linguistic play on frozen/freezing/free is most pertinent in the second
half of the radio play, which chronicles the expedition’s arrival at the Pole and
the return trip until the three surviving members’ death about 11 miles south
of One Ton Depot. The section «Vom Pol bis in den Tod» (xxi) includes a
«Refrain» that goes: «She: You are free. Scott: Mir ist kalt. She: You are
freezing./You are freezing to death.» In «Shattering Interlude,» the segment
based on Purcell’s «Cold People,» these lines are changed to «You are
freezing./You are free» (xxiii), hinting at Scott’s impending death. Scott’s «Ich
zittre» is followed by «She’s» line «You shatter – shatter – shatter – shatter,»
which can perhaps be read as an extreme translation of Scott’s statement. In
addition to the semantic meanings, these word plays make use of sounds and
alliterations and the acoustic excess they offer beyond representation. «She’s»
«YOU ARE FROZEN»
125
response to Scott’s fatalistic observation «Den inneren Südpol verläßt du nie»
is a not very comforting but soothingly enunciated «Never-nevermore»
(xxiii). In «IceLyrics,» a section whose music does not fall into one of the four
main themes, «She» confronts Scott with the inanity of his undertaking: «cold
hero/stupid collage of flesh/with only one simple thought in your brain:/be
the first be the first down nowhere, where nobody is» (xxviii). Condemning
Scott’s pursuit of undiscovered territory as single-minded and masculinist,
this passage is one of the few direct expressions of criticism. In section twentyfive, the play’s last segment set to words, Madonna’s melodious characterization «You’re frozen» becomes a statement of physical fact: «You – are –
frozen» (xxxiii). Taken literally, frozenness conjures up neither stoic acceptance of a tragic fate nor does it evoke the figure of a hero. Linguistic
playfulness and intermedial references throughout the piece add an element of
artistic excess beyond its socio-sexual critique of Scott’s voyage into the ice.
Creative adaptation of the historical record and the forging of new
associations are Ammer’s foremost method. Historical records report that
Robert Falcon Scott was probably the last of the three remaining team
members to have died, his coat slightly open. Those who found him about
eight months after his death interpreted this detail as an effort on his part to
remain conscious for as long as possible. In Ammer’s version, Scott compares
freezing to death with his neck exposed to being beheaded, recalling that dying
under the guillotine, according to its inventor, merely instills the «Gefühl einer
leichten Erfrischung am Hals» (xxx). Certainly far-fetched, the link between
the open coat and the guillotine is the temperature sensation they cause. Yet in
the final section Scott observes: «Nach mir: Kein Abenteuer mehr. Nach mir:
Der Krieg» (xxxii), referring to a historical context of which the real Robert
Scott had no knowledge. The passage continues with a vision of a Europe
where male corpses hang from trees, «das Glied noch vom Strangulieren
erigiert» (xxxiii). The sexualized colonial fantasies invoked at the radio play’s
beginning return in a grotesque triumph of masculinity beyond death. Inspired
by nationalistic fervor and violent competition between groups, Scott’s
undertaking becomes part of a historical continuum that spans the violence
of the French Revolution and the killing of World War I.
Ammer’s Frost, even though it uses authentic material and does not alter
basic facts, presents us with a rather different version of Scott’s well-known
race to the pole than previous interpretations. His Scott is neither a hero in the
tradition of Stefan Zweig nor an anti-hero à la Wolfgang Weyrauch. Furthermore, Frost breaks with the approach to travels into the ice created in the
1980s, which, like Sebald’s «Und blieb ich am äußersten Meer» or Ransmayr’s
Die Schrecken des Eises und der Finsternis, draw on arctic exploration for
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Katharina Gerstenberger
stories that contain significant elements of contemporary political critique.
Andreas Ammer’s Frost shares the rejection of heroic conquest expressed in
the earlier texts, highlighting the potentially devastating consequences of
gender hierarchies, nationalism, and human exploitation of other species. Yet
Ammer, according to whom the radio drama is «der einzig zeitgemäße Platz,
an dem sich heute noch große Geschichten erzählen lassen,» (qtd. in Huwiler,
Erzähl-Ströme 13), expresses his critique through aesthetic means that also
challenge the listener’s expectation that a work of art must contain a
decipherable message. «Große Geschichte» in Ammer’s sense means to
present the audience with a stimulating performance rather than immersion
in a world of mimetic illusion. Instead of simply demoting Robert Falcon
Scott from his position of hero, which, after all, has been done before, Frost
refuses to portray him as mirror for our times from whose story we must
extrapolate a message about the current state of affairs.30 Frost is not a piece
that wants to teach. More than anything, it invites the audience to experience
the performance as a work of art that entertains and possibly provokes.
The fascination with journeys into the ice does not end with Frost and the
late 1990s. Martin Mosebach’s 2001 Der Nebelfürst is a satirical take on artic
exploration, linking the fantasy world of the North with the desire for
financial gain in a novel about a (historical) con-artist who seeks to exploit coal
deposits on an island off Spitsbergen. Falk Richter’s theater play Unter Eis
(2004), with its farcical scenes about the world of international finance,
outsourcing, and high-power consulting, ends by letting it characters freeze to
death as they reflect on questions of beauty, love, and the meaning of life. Jo
Lendle’s Alles Land (2011) is a detached and somewhat ironic recounting of
the story of Alfred Wegener, the German geologist and explorer who first put
forward the theory of the continental drift and died in 1930 during an attempt
to cross Greenland. Ilija Trojanow’s novel Eistau (2011), which tells the story
of a glaciologist whose concern for the melting ice of the Antarctic drives him
to an act of sabotage, will probably not be the last work about a disastrous
journey into then ice.The age of cold heroes, at least for now, seems over. The
allure of the globe’s icy regions and the stories they inspire persists.
Notes
1
2
I thank Tanja Nusser for her careful reading of this piece and her many helpful
suggestions for making it better. Kingson 1; 4.
This image exists in various versions. For instance, http://www.greenpepperblog.com/
greenpepper_blog/2009/10/just-how-helpful-will-the-new-alaskan-polar-bear-habitat
-be.html. A more humorous adaptation shows a polar bear on a piece of ice with
«YOU ARE FROZEN»
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
127
London’s Tower Bridge in the background: <www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/polar-bear-in-londons-thames-river.html>.
A good overview of this literature can be found in Marx, Wege ins Eis and Spufford; see
also Kastura. Werner Herzog’s documentary Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
asks what motivates people to live at the South Pole; examples of crime fiction are Stan
Jones’ Nathan Active series, set in a remote Alaska village, and Melanie McGrath’s
White Heat, which takes place on Canada’s Ellesmere Island.
Several scholars have remarked on this phenomenon at the time including Grimm and
Frank, who argues that the polar regions – depicted as «Orte der Sinnlosigkeit und
Symbole des Bestehenden» (129) – stand for a critique of capitalism and a social system
in which human relationships are measured in monetary terms only.
Before writing Schrecken, Christoph Ransmayr published two journalistic pieces based
on this material (Extrablatt 1982 and TransAtlantik 1983).
«Und blieb ich am äußersten Meer,» first published in the Austrian literature journal
Manuskripte, is W. G. Sebald’s earliest literary publication.
Heinz-Peter Preusser makes a similar argument when he writes that «Eisberg, Vereisung, Eiszeit» are widely used metaphors for the catastrophic thinking of the late
1970s and early 1980s (48).
Menke.
There also exists ample visual documentation, most notably Herbert Ponting’s (1870–
1935) photographs as well as his film The Great White Silence (1924). According to the
stage directions in Ammer’s manuscript, Ponting’s film was shown during the Oberhausen performance of Frost.
Alt 33.
For a thorough analysis of Neue Sachlichkeit see Becker.
The drama was first staged in Berlin’s Staatliches Schauspielhaus on February 16, 1930.
Goering later turned the drama into a libretto for which the composer Winfried Zillig
wrote the music. The twelve-tone work premiered in 1937 under the title Das Opfer. For
a careful analysis of «Südpolexpedition» see Fäth’s chapter on the drama. In her
conclusion Fäth rightly rejects as problematical Goering’s espousal of «Männlichkeitsethos und Nationalgefühl» (250).
Roald Amundsen died in the arctic in 1928 during a rescue mission.
An interesting comparison is Georg Heym’s 1911 «Die Südpolfahrer,» an expressionist
vision of the discovery of the South Pole in which the explorers reflect on the insanity of
their undertaking but nevertheless keep on moving towards their goal.
Becker rejects Lethen’s approach as not appropriate for the assessment of Neue
Sachlichkeit as a literary movement but does acknowledge the validity of his arguments
concerning «identity» towards the end of the Weimar Republic (31–32).
FM Einheit is the stage name of the musician Frank Martin Strauss, born 1958 in
Dortmund.
Peter Handke’s experimental radio plays Hörspiel (1968) and Hörspiel Nr. 2 (1969) use
language as «verbal material» that is no longer intended to convey plot or meaning
(Corry and Haggh, 266).
A CD version came out in 2000.
<www.amazon.de/Frost-79 %C2 %B040-Andreas-Ammer/dp/3939444332>.
Ammer describes his writing method as «‹literarisches Sampeln,›: Ich ziehe Bücher aus
dem Regal und dann kommt ein Satz, der plötzlich paßt» (Neuhaus 118). This method
applies to Frost as well.
128
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Katharina Gerstenberger
The question of Scott’s professionalism shaped the reception of his expedition right
from the beginning. Diana Preston, in her biography of Scott, points out that Amundsen
was by many considered a «professional» who turned the journey to the Pole into a race
(5). There seems to be general agreement that the use of dogs instead of ponies and
clothing made from animal skins rather than wool, something Amundsen had adopted
from the Inuit he encountered during his extensive travels in the Arctic, in addition to a
shorter route, a start earlier in the year, and favorable weather conditions account for
Amundsen’s success. Amundsen’s sole focus on reaching the Pole without seeking to
collect geological specimens or taking numerous photographs is at times interpreted as
an unfair advantage. Francis Spufford, in his study on ice in the English imagination,
simply notes: «The English were uniquely unprepared for the job» (5).
For an excellent overview see Huwiler, «80 Jahre Hörspiel.»
«She» may well be an allusion to the heroine of H. Rider Haggard’s 1887 best-selling
novel in which the 2000 year old African queen Ayesha figures as a cruel yet alluring
ruler also dubbed as «She who-must-be-obeyed.» Unlike Haggard’s male fantasy of a
powerful female figure, Ammer’s speaker challenges such notions.
All page references are to the unpublished manuscript.
Zantop 55.
Scott’s arm apparently broke off with a sound like a pistol shot when E. L. Atkinson
sought to retrieve his diary. Tryggve Gran revealed this piece of information in an
interview conducted many years later. It is not included in any of the other accounts,
presumably out of respect for Scott and his men. See Scott, 502.
The line has such resonance that Francis Spufford could choose it as the title for his book
on ice in the English imagination.
The omission of the word «past,» which is included in the original text and without
which the line does not really make sense, seems to be a mistake.
A third, a version of blues singer Oscar Brown’s 1960 song «But I was Cool,» is
included in the manuscript but not on the CD. The song, which mixes original lyrics
with references to Scott’s journey, was to have been performed by «She.» The play on
«coolness» and cold is obvious.
Most memorably perhaps in a 1970 Monty Python sketch about a film team in the
process of shooting a movie titled «Scott of the Antarctic.» The sketch ridicules Scott
himself as well as the self-importance of those who work in the film industry.
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