Gluttony Artists Carnival, Enlightenment and Consumerism in Germany on the Threshold of Modernity By TOM CHEESMAN (Swansea) ABSTRACTS Written and pictorial sources for a wave of popular representations of gluttons in German cities about 1700-1710 are presented and analysed as symptomatic of epochal cultural change. Schrift- und Bildbelege für eine Welle volkstümlicher Darstellungen von Vielfressern in deutschen Städten um 1700-1710 werden vorgestellt und als Symptome einer epochalen kulturgeschichtlichen Wende analysiert. Erst kommt das Fressen, dann kommt die Moral. (Brecht, Die Dreigroschenoper, 1928) Es ist niemals ein Dokument der Kultur, ohne zugleich ein solches der Barbarei zu sein. (Benjamin, "Eduard Fuchs", 1936) I. An extraordinary vogue for spectacles of insatiable, indiscriminate appetite swept central Germany in the 1700s. Crowds flocked to see both touring 'glut- tony artists'l and other entertainers who cashed in by retailing pictures of such freaks, and stories about them. Assorted textual and visual documents of this vogue survive, offering tantalising glimpses into the urban popular culture of the time. One source is a play written by a Berlin schoolmaster, in which he seeks to promote a culture of reason and decorum by alienating his audience of schoolboys and local dignitaries from what he saw as the barbarous excesses of 1 Gluttony artists ('Freßkünstler') were common in the 19th century - see Hans Scheubi, Showfreaks und Monster. Sammlung Felix Adanos, Köln 1974, 145f., and Signor Saltarino (i.e. H. W. Otto), Fahrend Volk. Abnormitäten, Kuriositäten und interessante Vertreter der wandernden Künstlerwelt, Leipzig 1895, 148-150. They are the opposite of the slightly better-known 'hunger artists', as in Kafka's 1922 story Ein Hungerkünstler, which were a major attraction on the European and American variety and exhibition circuit in the 1890s. Locked in a cage or a gl ass tank, hunger artists or 'fasting showmen' would eat nothing for periods of several weeks, subject to constant public scrutiny and frequent medical checks. See Breon MitchelI, "Kafka and the Hunger Artists", in: Alan Udoff (ed.), Kafka and the Contemporary Critical Performance. Centenary Readings, Bloomington, lndianapolis 1987, 236-255.