INSECT LIFE AND LETTERS: THE STUDIES OF HANNS HEINZ EWERS AND OTTO AND ROSE HECHT

Abstract

This article argues that vast histories of war and displacement in the twentieth century are connected to the small and almost unnoticeable lives of insects, and that philology has much to gain from paying attention to insect worlds. We examine two case studies: the work of the German entomologist Otto Hecht and his wife, Rose Caro Hecht, and the lay entomology of the German writer Hanns Heinz Ewers and his letter exchange with geneticist Richard B. Goldschmidt. Drawing on the cultural-theoretical work of Walter Benjamin, our analysis sheds light on the entanglement of entomological and philological labour and a recurrent interplay of intimacy and violence in both. We develop an approach which takes seriously the eros of intellectual pursuits and the endless curiosity that drives the study of words and insects, but which also shows how these encounters with the very small intersect with incomprehensibly large-scale political violence in the twentieth century. We playfully suggest that the method we develop in this article constitutes a form of ‘insect philology’.