ABSTRACT
The penultimate tale in the collection, Die Innerste, named for a river that originates in the Harz Mountains and flows across a plain into the Leine, presents a rich opportunity for teasing out the resonant violence of the local and the transnational in Wilhelm Raabe's evocation of Germany. In comparative safety at home, German civilian men and German women could rally to the cause, raising money, folding bandages, and knitting socks. German territories where tearful mothers, imbued with patriotism, urged their sons to go off to war for the German cause. Raabe's discontent with the new German Empire is well documented. The blurring of distinctions, overlap, and the continuum of international war and the local, of the battlefield and the domestic, suggest the possibility of new readings of Die Innerste. Die Innerste of course does conclude with the death of a demonized woman, a demise that appears to function as just the sort of exorcism that Hamblet identifies.
