Oktober 2021 / Stadtpark Wien*

„Beware of the water, strict Lord! the mermaids even put you down tremendously“[1]
„Hütet euch vor dem Wasser, gestrenger Herr! die Nixen setzen einem gar gewaltig zu“

For centuries, from a patriarchal point of view, otherness has also been associated with an imagination of femininity that cannot be controlled. Overwriting self-determination with a patriarchal narrative is a strategy that can also be established along the development of water women: taken from a powerful, female narrative, they were pressed into a Christianized corset, female identity finding on the basis of the myths of Mermaids, Melusinen or Undinen from the late Middle Ages thus became an aberration between non-negotiable archetypes: untouchable goddess vs soulless seductress vs need-free Femme Fatale vs vengeful monster. A search at the end of which only the position of the submissive, christian wife promised a way out. An image of femininity in which femininity should split, double or dissolve in order to free patriarchal power fantasies from the dilemma of being born, of origin from a female body (Luce Irigaray). Stories of water women and mermaids – for example in the Danube like Undine or the Donauweibchen – have been repeating one story for centuries: men’s fear of the power of water and of a form of femininity that equates this uncontrollability. An emancipatory reading of these stories, however, can make the water woman an ally, both when it comes to constructions of femininity and the current struggle for awareness for natural riverbanks, free-flowing waters, meadow landscapes or swamps.
Water women than come to life: as offers, as possibilities, as memories, as a way to switch between land and water and as an idea of dissolution not as a tragic ending but as a self-determined becoming. A creek like Undine, seafoam like Andersens little mermaid or perhaps a mermaid-microbe in the Danubesand.

As part of her PhD at the University of Art and Design Linz, Wiltrud Katherina Hackl is researching the constructions of femininity and water using the example of European female water identities.

The “Donauweibchen” is a water woman figure that has been located in Vienna for centuries. The Danube back then was not a canalized river as it is today, but a floodplain landscape, wedlands, meadow landscape. From about 1600 [2] onwards, regulations were made, primarily for shipping, about 100 years later measures were taken for flood protection, from the middle of the 13th century the „Fischhof“ is mentioned in Vienna (Bauernmarkt), evidence is given that fishing on a professional purpose took place from the 11^th century and “intense fishing” goes back to 3500 bc.[3]

The figure of the mermaid goes back further and is to be found on every continent, in every culture and every religion. (Echidna probably was one of the first – a first water woman figure in Greek mythology, the mother of the monsters and she seems to be similar to the Melusine, she has a split snake tail and is pictured with her legs wide open. You find a beautiful statue of her in the Parco dei Mostri in Bomarzo, Sacro Bosco, Italy, 1552–1585. Devi Danu a water goddess in Balinese Hinduism – is also one of the first – note the relationship between Danube and Danu. The existence of a watergod Danubius by the way is repeatedly doubted scientifically, most recently this was also pointed out in the current Danube exhibition in the Austrian National Library.[4])

In any case, the Danube water woman is a friendly mermaid: She warns people of the flood, of the highwaters, sometimes she also has little gifts, material goods, gold & diamonds and sometimes beautiful, young male fishermen follow her to the bottom of the Danube to live there with her. Her representation is cross-genre – it can be found as an allegory of a construction of femininity in music and literature that is inseparably linked to nature – in the German-speaking world, especially from the end of the 18th century, which has to do with the constructions of Nature in German Romanticism. In Karl Friedrich Hensler’s music[5] play, she even gets a name: Hulda. On closer inspection, however, Hulda is not a name, but a designation: on the Faroe Islands, invisible spirits, elves are still referred to as „huld volk“, in Norway Elves are called “Huldres”.[6]

Hulda/Donauweibchen is a mermaid, a water woman, but she does without the apparent characteristics of a mermaid: she is rarely described as half human / half animal, sometimes with a fish tail, never like the Echidna or the french Melusine with a snake tail.

The viennese version of the mermaid seemed to have disappeared in the middle of the 20^th century, as also the Folklorist Leopold Schmidt states in his article for the Viennese Magazine for Ethnology in 1943[7]: „(…) she is the representative of the ancient, natural, but certainly only in theatrical presentation, in operetta style or in caricature. There is no longer any belief in the water woman in the big city.“

Cups…

„Even the allegorical representations that could be related to the figure are not perceived as alive. (…) and very few visitors to the Stadtpark know that Hanns Gasser’s female figure is supposed to represent the Donauweibchen. In fact, nothing has passed from the legend into the sculpture, but there is nothing left to locate the legend on the other hand.“ He misses the motif as well in Gasser’s sculpture as in the old legends: „At first no names are mentioned. Then, in telling popular tradition, no motivation is attempted, the love of the young fisherman (…) is that desire that in the popular legend always draws people to the water women, and often enough the water beings to the people.” He points out the “double-mindedness of the Elvish beings, (…) since they occasionally bring gifts, occasionally lure people back to wet death. In this double mindedness, these beings are figures led by destiny, they have ancient features of tradition, neither they nor the people who misunderstand them are to blame for what is happening. (…)“[8]

Schmidt claims that the Water Woman is not able to make any decision, he describes her as one who is driven in the truest sense of the word, cannot do otherwise and – bears „no guilt“ for what she does – luring people, murdering people, killing people, etc. He incapacitates them. What is already impossible for the „woman“ in the naturalization of her gender – to go into nature, since she is part of nature, and can only distinguish herself from it by a male hero – experiences the water woman twice – in her femininity and nature (water) construction.

This fountain figure – although it is actually more reminiscent of a smooth Venus figure than a strong water woman figure – made a similar experience: Ordered in 1858 for the Fischhof / Fischmarkt (today Bauernmarkt), it remained in the depot for a few years and was set up in the Stadtpark in 1865. Why? Perhaps she was not enough of a water woman for the fishermen. (it is a copy btw – the original is either to find at the Hotel Imperial or somewhere else, a small copy can be found at the Wien Museum – both also made from marble)

Similar to the Danube Water Woman, one could now critically treat any water woman’s story on the basis of these male perspectives, descriptions and illustrations, but what I try to do within my PhD is to take a completely different view and start where Schmidt thinks „nobody is to blame“. What if the water woman knows exactly what she is doing? What if she is not driven by human lust, longing for a Christian soul or constructed feelings of guilt, but very consciously either seduces, lures, saves or kills?

What if all the incapacitations, trivializations, objectifications of the water woman, whether as a statue, a song or a fairy tale, are solely due to a patriarchal fear, a fear of non-controllable and constant flow – which are associated with both the construct of water and the construct of femininity?

In order to tame this fear, men started draining, building damns and waterpower plants, tunnels, canalization etc. buildings that are very martial, usually made of stone & concrete, to set a mark in the landscape.

This is also what the male companions of water women want so much – they want to control them and their magic power and of course they fail:

„Das kommt davon, wenn Gleich sich nicht zu Gleich gesellt, wenn Mensch und Meerfräulein ein

wunderliches Bündnis schließen.“ [9]

(“…when man and seamaid make a miraculous alliance.“)

Says Huldbrand to Undine, when he realizes that she will remain a water creature, that she can control and appease the masses of water on a stormy shipping on the Danube, but only by and with magic, something that Huldbrand cannot understand and for which he finally rejects Undine.

This „non-understanding“ or „misunderstanding“ as Schmidt put it – is part of the water woman narrative, she represents a counter-model to the „princess“ in many ways but is not similar to the figure of the „witch“ either. She is transitory and temporary and fleeting even within the fairytale genre. The water woman will not and on a second gaze doesn’t need to be saved by a male hero, she stays within her elements – which is mostly a romantic idea of nature. When the water woman decides to leave the water, her family, her natural habitat, she will never be the same and never return to the water as herself – but in a different shape and element – Andersens Little Mermaid as Seafoam, Undine as creek, etc. but it is always her own decision.

I would now like to briefly discuss a few of these figures I work with within my PhD:

As I mentioned before – water women mostly don’t want to do harm to human beings, on the contrary they want to get in contact, they fall in love with human beings, they even marry human beings, they give birth to half humans/half water women, they are sensitive, passionate and sometimes very political…  So there is no doubt, they want to be part of the life of human beings, but they also want to be respected and left alone from time to time, in their habitats down in the sea, in the rivers, the ponds or sometimes – like Loreley – on the rocks close to rivers. And – please if you want to – worship her/them like for example people in Nigeria (Yoruba) and in Brazil (Candomblé) do with Oxum.

^{(c) Wiltrud Hackl}

Within my research I deal with different water women, such as die Fee / Marie de France and Melusine / Jean D’Arras, also contemporary figures and analysis such as Marlen Haushofers Mermaid within her short story Das Nixenkind or Ingeborg Bachmanns Undine geht.

Die schöne Lau / Eduard Möricke, Loreley or of course Undine herself – starting with de la Motte Fouquet early 19^th century to the beautiful film by Christian Petzold in 2020 (Paula Beer & Franz Rogowski).

At the beginning I made a list of female water beings (disregarding the question if they are “real” or imaginary, from Ama Women in Japan to the Mermaid of Zennor) and tried to classify them in a very basic way – external characteristics such as the nature of their bodies, the ability to transform the body, their habitat, also their family, social and economic status – whether they are related, whether they are a threat, or are threatened and by whom, I also tried to record in the shortest possible descriptions in which narratives and stories they are woven in, that is: setting, time of their creation, other protagonists, persons they rely on or they have an impact on, images, spaces and places, which are designed as reference systems and always also included as speculative narratives and spaces.

This made it possible for me to relate the figures, literary drafts, pictorial representations of phantasmorgias to each other, compare them, perceive them rather as generic or generic forms and do counter-reading with contemporary feminist, philosophical, post-structuralist and other texts from sociology and gender studies.

What is obvious – who tells or speaks of the water woman, is talking of or means the mermaid’s body, which is not only mostly characterized as a divided one, but also has to live in a surrounding, that tells a story of dichotomies: half on land / half in the water / half fish / half woman / half snake / half woman / nature vs. culture etc.

The female body in relation to water seemed to always has been “mysterious” for men – as the author Jenny Landreth points out in her description of the first women who started to swim in public, also as a political protest like the suffragettes did in the early 20^th century in London:

… Zitat Swell
“Aquatic Amazons, bathing belles, venturesome damsels and ‘nymphs of North London’, a phrase used in The Times – women in water really brought out the romantic side of writers. Qualified professionals were keen to offer explanations of how women could manage the feats of both staying in the water and remaining afloat at all. In a newspaper article ‘Girls beat Men as Bathers’ in July 1929, one ‘medical man’ used his expertise to explain how women had greater power of endurance. ‘They have … an extra thick covering of skin, which enables them not only to resist the chill of the water for a longer period than men, but they are not so easily fatigued as men. Because of the physiological differences in the sexes they are much more buoyant.’ We cane only presume that this ‘medical man’ thought that women’s breasts and and maybe even our wombs were some kind of flotation device? Huge, if true.” [10]

“Extra thick skin”, wombs and breasts as flotation devices – why not? The story of the water woman – legend or human – is a story of overcoming duality, dichotomy and binarity. The water woman does not have to decide between two patriarchal drafts of femininity. It is also a story of allowing oneself to expand in as many directions as possible and describe a becoming and a growth. Will it be sea foam, a creek or extra thick skin.

In fact, the body of the water woman stretches and expands – Melusine, for example, grows wings when she leaves Raymond (flying snake / fliegende Schlange = Drache / dragon), die schöne Lau has webbings between her fingers, Undine becomes a ghost and a creek, the Little Mermaid becomes sea foam. The mermaid has the ability to transform her body and maybe could be called a shapeshifter.

More than that the water woman herself is always part of other systems – she is not the lonely “otherother”, homeless and unloved – water women have family, girlfriends, allies, people and other living beings for whom they feel responsible. I will describe this right later using the example of the Warszawska Syrenka.

Thus, when viewed, the figure of the water woman not only forms the edge, the outside, the inside, the membrane, the memory, the trace, the embodiment and the multiple endings or the dissolution of a story, she is the story. Since she/it is becoming in permanence, it seeks no clue and no end, but reference points and reference systems[11]. These references can be herself and her own physicality – Loreley with comb and mirror, Melusine in the bathroom, but also any other human/non-human references.

The water woman seen from this perspective is no longer part of a dual machine of man and woman, like an object of mediation that would have to decide or is torn between two sexes, she is more than part of every part and element of the story and all the characters of the story have to pass through the water woman, must temporarily also become water woman in order to become each other. (Deleuze/Guattari, Bronfen[12], von Samsonow[13])

From this perspective, water women can grow beyond the boundaries of patriarchal imagination, into something that may not have a body or name at all, not because it is negated or denied, but because it is no longer available in this game around representation of femininity, and so she has time for other things like fighting for democracy, LGBTQ rights or against strict abortion laws like in Poland last year, when the Warszawska Syrenka became a symbol of the protests.

Warszawska Syrenka

Within the LGBTQ protests in the summer 2020, a replica of the bronze figure of Ludwika Nitschowa, which represents the Warszawska Syrenka, became both an accomplice of the LGBTQ Protesters and the opponents of the stricter abortion ban in Warsaw. This figure is a water woman always equipped with attributes of defense, of struggle,[14] her depiction refers to the founding myths of the city, to which the manifesto of the collective Stop Bzdurom refers:

„The Warsaw mermaid has a sword and a shield in her hand. She has a rainbow and a scarf. This is our call to fight. As long as we fall asleep with the thought that nothing will change anyway. That’s how long we need to be reminded that we exist. That we are not alone. This city is also ours. Fight! „^[15]

A look at the founding myths clarifies and sharpens the reference to the mermaid: in some the
Warszawska Syrenka is described as the sister of the Little Mermaid,[16] while Andersen’s mermaid gives her voice to the sea witch to become „human“, the sister is captured to sell her for her voice. However, she uses the voice to resist, is saved and thanks with the promise to protect Warsaw, to occasionally come from the Vistula to the surface of the water in order to perceive the change of the city.

The protesters are reminding the mermaid of this promise of a benevolent view of change. The water woman thus becomes also a narrative of the possibility of being part of society and at the same time watching from a distance, staying on the edge – as I started – the mermaid from time to time also wants to be left alone. (It no longer represents a gender, and standing outside the rules of a heteronormative, patriarchal social construct is no longer synonymous with exclusion from that society with the mermaid at your side.) The mermaid decides if, and when to withdraw, and without the mermaid – in Warsaw after all a founding narrative – the city ceases to become. Thus, the Syrenka becomes an accomplice in the sense of necessary, democratic, feminist and ecological demands and protests like they are taking place not only in Poland last year but right now and still at the Lobau in Vienna. So – like the Warszawska Syrenka, her Viennese relative could become a symbol for a fight and for protests – for the wetlands at the Lobau for example which is, not least, her habitat.

So, let me end with a contemporary adaption of the Danube water woman – she already became a SuperHero, now called Diana[17]… well deserved

Thank you!

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• die lecture wurde vor dem „Donauweibchenbrunnen“ im Wiener Stadtpark gehalten. Recht unscheinbar und nur wenig an eine Nixe erinnernd steht die Figur als Abschluss eines Trinkwasserbrunnens. Geschaffen wurde sie 1858 von Hanns Gasser, eigentlich für den Fischhof im 1. Bezirk, dort wurde die Statue – im Original aus Carrara Marmor – allerdings nie aufgestellt. 1865 kam sie aus einem Depot schließlich in den Stadtpark. Die Figur im Stadtpark – aus Sandstein, da offenbar das Original im 2. Weltkrieg offenbar beschädigt wurde – ist eine Kopie (möglicherweise der Kopie, eine Figur befindet sich auch im Hotel Imperial), eine Figur aus Carrara Marmor befindet sich im Wienmuseum. Diese Frage nach dislozieren, Repräsentation, Verkörperung, Auflösung entspräche allerdings wieder sehr dem Wesen der Wasserfrau.

^{[1] That Donauweibchen – A romantic-comic folk tale with singing – in three acts, according to a legend of prehistoric times for the k. k. priv. Marinellische Schaubühne by Karl Friedrich Hensler. Mustk by Ferdinand ChewerDirector. Vienna. 1798.}

^[2] The Danube floodplains east of Vienna – natural or cultural landscape? Schön, Robert, in: Grüne Reihe des Lebensministeriums 11, Wien 1997, Hsg: öst. Federal Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry, Environment and Water Management

[3] Ebd, S 256

[4] https://www.onb.ac.at/forschung/forschungsblog/artikel/der-alte-mann-und-der-fluss-danubius-personifikationen-auf-karten

[5]„Das Donauweibchen – Ein romantisch-komisches Volksmährchen (sic!) mit Gesang“ – in drei Aufzügen, nach einer Sage der Vorzeit für die k. k. priv. Marinelische Schaubühne by Karl Friedrich Hensler. Die Ferdinand Kauer,  Wien 1798.

[6] Grimm, Wilhelm, Über das Wesen der Elfen, Kapitel XII. Verhältnis zu den Menschen, S. 274, in: Croker, Thomas Crofton, Irische Märchen, übersetzt von den Brüdern Grimm, Berlin 1985 (Titel der Originalausgabe: Fairy Legends and Traditions of zthe South of Ireland, 1825)

[7] This has to be read and treated with the knowledge that Leopold Schmidt aswell as Rudolh Haybach (who published „Unter gotischen Dächern“, his version of „Orea“ as he calls the „Donauweibchen“ is very different from the old story) were either NSDAP members (Haybach) or at least obviously were not in opposition to nationalsocialst ideas and politics (Schmidt has been working and writing for the Volkskundemuseum during and after WWII.

^[8] Schmidt, Leopold, Das Donauweibchen in: Wiener Zeitschrift für Volkskunde, Hsg:  Verein für Volkskunde, Red:  Haberlandt, Arthur; Vienna, 1943, Verein für Volkskunde

[9] Undine, Friedrich de la Motte-Fouqué (1811), S.47, Stuttgart 2019, S.82 f  

[10] Landreth, Jenny: Swell. A Waterbiography, London 2017, S. 149

^[11] Vgl. Deleuze/Guattari, 1730 – Intensiv-Werden, Tier-Werden, Unwahrnehmbar-Werden…, S. 354 f. in: Tausend Plateaus, Gilles Deleuze / Felix Guattari, Berlin 1992

[12] Weiblichkeit und Repräsentation aus der Perspektive von Semiotik, Ästhetik und Psychoanalyse, Elisabeth Bronfen in: Genus, Zur Geschlechterdifferenz in den Kulturwissenschaften, Hadumod Bußmann/Renate Hof (Hg.), Stuttgart 1995

[13] Elisabeth von Samsonow, Der Körper als Passage, S. 175 – 187, in: Quel Corps, München 2002

^[14] The bronze figure of Nichowa – one of two depictions of the Warszawska Syrenka in public space – was probably chosen for a reason: the model for the bronze statue in 1939 was the poet Krystyna Krahelska, who died in 1944 as a paramedic in one of the Warsaw uprisings against the occupation of the National Socialists.

^[15] https://www.facebook.com/stopbzdurom/

^[16] http://archiwum.auslandsdienst.pl/3/22/Artykul/403052,Aus-dem-Archiv-Warschauer-Seejungfer

[17] https://www.austriansuperheroes.com/impressum